On Religion: Dan Brown Has It Wrong

Like some (or perhaps even many) of you, I’m reading Dan Brown’s new novel, The Lost Symbol. It’s a great read, no doubt about it. But early on, there’s this one part that really bugs me. It’s on page 30, where one of Professor Langdon’s Harvard undergraduates wonders whether Masonry is a religion. “Give it the litmus test,” says Langdon. “What are the three prerequisites for an ideology to be considered a religion?” An alert student answers, “ABC. Assure, Believe, Convert.” “Correct,” Langdon replies. “Religions assure salvation; religions believe in a precise theology; and religions convert nonbelievers.”

This is the part that bugs me. A bajillion people are going to read Dan Brown’s thriller, and most of them will swallow his definition of religion—which is a bad one—without blinking an eye. According to his definition, liberal Christianity is not a religion. Neither is Judaism, Taoism, or Unitarian Universalism. None follow the ABC formula.

But if ABC doesn’t describe Unitarian Universalism, what does?

For me, the better formula is EMC. Unitarian Universalism envisions a transformed world; Unitarian Universalism maps the way there; and Unitarian Universalism challenges people to be inner-directed and authentic in their spirituality. EMC.

Take E. Our religion envisions a future in which people respect the interdependent web of all existence as well as the inherent worth and dignity of every person that dwells within it. Our religion envisions the spread of faith communities which support a free and responsible search for truth and meaning in an empowering context of mutual acceptance and encouragement. Our religion envisions world community, grounded in democracy, in which there is peace, liberty, and justice for all. All of this comprises the transformed world which Unitarian Universalism envisions.

Note how I have simply reframed the Seven Principles here. The “E” part of my EMC formula touches on things we are already familiar with. And so does the “M” part. “M” maps out the way forward by naming specific spiritual disciplines which, if practiced regularly, will enable us to help make Unitarian Universalism’s inspired, future oriented-vision come true. These spiritual disciplines include worship, study, service, generosity, life in covenant-centered community, and inner-development practices like prayer or meditation. Each of these is an integral part of the map.

E, M, and, finally, C. “C” stands for “challenge”: Unitarian Universalism does not so much convert as challenge. It challenges people to face up to the fact that our transformed vision of the world is not guaranteed; we must work hard to make it so. It challenges people to be willing to grow and change over time, even if it takes us into places of chaos and messiness and grief. It challenges us to trust life and have faith that it is worth living, even in the worst of times. It challenges us to reject parroting other people’s religious ideas and to be authentic and inner-directed in what we believe and value. It challenges us to connect with the Divine Spark that is within each and all and, out of this experience of wonder and awe, to heal our world and make it whole.

This is the formula that describes our faith. Not ABC, but EMC. And do you see how closely it resembles Einstein’s famous equation: E=MC2? I think there’s an intriguing suggestion here. In our Unitarian Universalist way of religion, there is power. Dan Brown may not know it. Let’s be sure we do.

Planting Seeds of Soul: The Seed of Self-Knowledge

How many of you remember the 1984 movie hit The Karate Kid? It’s a story about a high-schooler named Daniel who’s moved from New Jersey to California and finds himself the target of a group of bullies—karate students from the Cobra Kai Dojo, taught by a teacher who is himself a bully, John Kreese, who says over and over, “Mercy is for the weak. An enemy deserves no mercy.” They’ve decided that Daniel is their enemy, and he’s in trouble.

Enter Mr. Miyagi. Daniel initially knows him as the eccentric maintenance man at the apartment complex he and his mom are living in, but as the bullying at school gets worse, Daniel learns that there’s more to him than meets the eye. He’s a karate expert in his own right. Learned it from his Dad, but not as a way of spreading hurt in the world. Karate is a discipline of the spirit—a way of beauty and strength. “Fighting always last answer to problem,” he tells Daniel. The crucial issue is attitude—that’s what’s wrong with the bullies from school. He says, “No such thing as bad student, only bad teacher.”

Soon after that, Mr. Miyagi goes with Daniel to the Cobra Kai Dojo—goes right into the lion’s den, this fragile looking elderly man who is, like, two feet shorter than John Kreese. John Kreese just towers over him, exudes brutality. But Mr. Miyagi calmly stands his ground. Let’s solve things at the karate tournament coming up. Allow Daniel to train for it. No more bullying. Resolve things then.

It’s the kind of movie that makes you get up and cheer (even if the soundtrack is soooo 1980s). Daniel trains night and day with Mr. Miyagi, to hone his karate skills. He also learns more about his mysterious mentor—the fact that he was a World War II hero, the fact that his wife died in childbirth while she was at a Japanese internment camp. This is a man with courage and integrity. And in the end, at the karate tournament, when Daniel wins, he wins with courage and integrity. That’s what karate is really all about.

Now, to move us closer to our focus for today, consider how Mr. Miyagi trained Daniel in karate. If you know the movie, a phrase should spring instantly to mind: “wax on, wax off.” He says to Daniel, “I promise teach karate. That’s my part. You promise learn. I say, you do, no questions. That’s your part. Deal?” And of course, Daniel is all ready to go. “It’s a deal,” he says enthusiastically, with visions of advanced karate moves dancing in his head. So you can understand how confused he is when Mr. Miyagi then says, “First wash all the cars, then wax. Wax on right hand. Wax off left hand. Breathe in through nose, out through mouth. Don’t forget to breathe. Very important. Wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax off.” And then he leaves Daniel to the task. Daniel has just promised Mr. Miyagi to do what he says, no questions, so he jumps on it. Wax on, wax off. But after several more days of oddball tasks like this—sand the floor, paint the house, paint the fence—Daniel has had enough. How is any of this relevant to learning karate? How is any of this going to keep him alive when he fights those Cobra Kai bullies at the upcoming karate tournament? He thinks Mr. Miyagi is just using him. Says, “Four days I’ve been busting my butt, I haven’t learned a thing.”

But Daniel has. He just doesn’t know it yet. Mr. Miyagi has been planting seeds all along, seeds of karate skills, and now he’s going to open Daniel’s eyes. “Not everything is as it seems,” he says, and then he asks him to make the motions of “wax on, wax off.” Daniel proceeds to do exactly that—makes perfect half circles in the air. Then Mr. Miyagi does something completely unexpected: he throws a chest punch at him, and before Daniel even realizes what is happening, one of his circling hands has intercepted the punch and deflected it effortlessly. All along, without his conscious knowledge, his body has been absorbing the karate lessons perfectly. Sand the floor, paint the house, paint the fence have trained him in moves that effortlessly deflect all kinds of punches and kicks. Finally Daniel understands. He’s well on his way.

Not everything is as it seems. And this opens the way to our topic today: planting seeds of soul. How the seeds may not seem like much, at first glance, but if they are allowed to grow, the results are amazing.

As in Daniel’s situation, there’s urgency around this. We face bullies, too, which cause harm and hurt. Educator and spiritual activist Parker Palmer says it well, in his classic book, Let Your Life Speak. He says, “We arrive in this world with birthright gifts—then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but fit us into slots.” Parker Palmer goes on to say, “In families, in schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self towards images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism or sexism [or homophobia] our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self in order to gain the approval of others.” That’s Parker Palmer. Cobra Kai bullies of one form or another surround us. Our true selves, like Daniel in the movie, are fighting for their lives. And if we lose touch with them—if we give them up in exchange for living other people’s values—then life turns desperate. We turn brittle and bitter. We burn out. “Only when I give something that does not grow within me” says Parker Palmer, “do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.”

The situation is urgent. “The reason the earth lies shattered and in pieces is because man is disunited from himself.” Emerson said that. We must remember our true selves, re-establish the relationship, root ourselves down in the soil of our souls. Continually work at this, in the face of bullying forces that continually conspire to make us forget, to break the relationship, to pull up roots.

Enter Mr. Miyagi—or, actually, a book that came into my life this past summer, by meditation teacher Warren Lee Cohen called Raising the Soul: Practical Exercises for Personal Development. I was and am favorably struck by his approach, for four reasons. First, his use of the word “soul” fits in with our Unitarian Universalist way, in that what he has to say about it—what the exercises try to accomplish—puts the question of whether souls in a metaphysical sense exist to the side. Some of us believe, others do not, but what all of us can believe is that soulfuless as a quality of living is a far better thing than soullessness. That’s the central focus here: self-awareness, balance, perspective, non-anxiousness, also compassion—being able to deal with the inner critic and the inner chatterer with greater effectiveness. Doing justice to the inner self so we can do justice to the outer world. Soulfulness.

I like Warren Lee Cohen’s emphasis here, as well as the emphasis on safety, complementarity, and comprehensiveness. The series of seven exercises he teaches have been practiced by many people from all walks of life for many years, and they are completely safe, he says, “if performed as described. Their apparent simplicity does not detract from the power of their enduring effect when practiced steadily. They work gently over a long period of time, and will promote lasting change.” But what if you are already engaged in another contemplative or meditative practice—as quite a few of us here are? I’m thinking in particular of our wonderful Buddhist meditation group. The answer? Great—“the seven exercises are an excellent complement to any path of inner learning, and will help keep you grounded and in balance.”

As for the issue of comprehensiveness. This is the part I like best of all. As a Unitarian Universalist, I don’t want to check any aspect of myself at the door, as the price of coming in. I want to bring in my feelings, I want to bring in my will, and I want to bring in my thinking. Feeling, willing, and thinking all have to be a part of my spiritual way, for it to be right for me. Happily, the seven soul exercises that Warren Lee Cohen teaches reflect this. Just listen to their names:

Review of the Day
Clear Thinking
Intention in Action
Balance in Feeling
Positive World View
Open Mind
and
Gratitude

Especially fascinating to me is the order in which they are given. The first, Review of the Day, which is the one we will learn today, lays the foundation, and the rest follow in an intentional sequence. “Try not to skip an exercise or stay focused on any one for too long,” says Warren Lee Cohen, “as this will detract from their harmonizing, mutually enhancing effect.” It is a question of balance. Genuine soulfulness requires emotional intelligence as much as intellectual intelligence. And even if you have both, if willpower is weak, then the result is frustration. We need all three to be strong.

And now, like Mr. Miyagi said to Daniel, I say to those of you who are interested, and want to practice these soul-raising exercises over the course of this year, “I promise teach karate. That’s my part. You promise learn. I say, you do, no questions. That’s your part. Deal?”

Actually, you can ask questions. That’s OK. Another difference between what we’re doing now and the movie is that I’m going to be a fellow learner. We’re going to be planting seeds of soul together, one seed each month, for the next seven months.

And so: the first exercise: Review of the Day. Here it is, in all its “wax on, wax off” glory:

1. Create a space of 5 to 20 minutes for this exercise at the end of your day. Make it a part of your daily practice. Get into a new rhythm—try your best.

2. Situate yourself in a way that minimizes distractions and discomfort. Some people choose to walk as they do this; others stand; still others sit in a chair, or on the floor, or in bed. Find a place and a posture that suits you.

3. Relax your body—calm your mind. Think of an athlete stretching before practice or a musician tuning an instrument before playing. Warm up.

4. Begin the rewind. Starting with where you are, picture yourself going through your day backwards, as if you were witnessing things from outside, as an onlooker. Capture as many sights, sounds, smells, tastes, conversations, as you can. See how far you can get. Can you get to your first waking thoughts? Can you even get beyond this, to your dreams before you woke up? Allow knowledge of yourself to unfold.

Three pointers here, before we go on to the next and last step.

First one: What if your mind veers off on a tangent, as is so easy to do? Try to follow your thoughts back to where you left off. Track them down, thought by thought, image by image. Then continue where you left off. Of course, since we such are complicated creatures, when you find yourself veering off, in the moment you realize it, the inner critic might decide to show up and start berating you. I’ll have a lot more to say about the inner critic this year—doing these seven exercises is going to give us lots of practice in dealing with our inner gremlin, trust me. For now, just don’t allow yourself to get sucked in by the drama. Try to be patient and forgiving of your limitations. Respond to the inner critic gently. “Thank you for sharing your perspective, but now I will carry on with what I was doing.” Something like that. A good way of dealing with outer critics as well.

Second pointer: “Some people complete this exercise easily in 5-10 minutes. Others struggle to do even part of their day’s review in half an hour, or fall asleep right in the middle of things. What is most important, however, is not that this exercise is done perfectly, but that you have put effort into it, and that over time you are improving. It is the effort, the active work of soul, that fosters development. The point is to learn how to live a more meaningful life, not to be perfect, so be kind to yourself. Forgive. This is essential in any undertaking and even more important when the challenge is to develop your soul.”

And now the third pointer: “If it is very difficult for you to review your whole day, then I suggest you try to review just a part of your day, say from lunch back to breakfast, or from what happened when you returned from work or school. Again, perfection is not the point. What is the point is establishing a regular rhythm to your inner work—trying to do it every day and better still every day at the same time. Getting into a regular rhythm is key. Rhythm will strengthen your practice and will, in time, bring the best results.”

As for the final step of the exercise:

5. Finish up in a way that feels good for you. I say this out of consideration for the kind of impact the Review of the Day exercise can have. It can help put the day to rest; give it a sense of completion; enable a sounder sleep—some people even testify that it helps ease insomnia. Above all, the Review can help us see our lives with greater perspective. While we’re living our day forward, what happens may at the time seem insignificant or completely ordinary; yet looked at again, it can shine in a whole new light, for now it is finding a place in the context of the whole day. Positive patterns emerging and becoming known. True self emerging. We may also get clearer about the things in our day that drain our energy and leave us depleted—enabling us to be in a better position the next day and the next for making better choices. In light of all this, you may choose to end the Review of the Day with an entry in your journal, to write about the insights that arise, goals for the future. Another way of ending might be to share your reflections with a friend or a spouse—if you both do this, it can lead to strengthening your relationship, and that’s great. Yet a third way of ending can simply be to say thank you—thanks to the universe, thanks to God, or just plain thanks—for the gifts of the day, or simply the opportunity to become more aware of them.

It’s all about planting seeds of soul. One seed each and every month. Earlier, Parker Palmer talked about how we can be trained away from our true selves by various bullying forces: in families, in schools, in workplaces … and then he adds to the list religious communities. (Did you notice that? I did.) It’s true. We can lose our souls even in the very places that are supposed to help us find them. But not here. Here we are growing Unitarian Universalist souls. We’re going to raise the soul here in our midst, work hard to do that. And if you take up my challenge to join me in practicing the seven exercises, remember, if and when you find yourself wondering what they have to do with justice in the larger world and justice in our souls, remember Mr. Miyagi, and Daniel, and wax on, wax off. Sand the floor, paint the house, paint the fence. Not everything is as it seems. True self will rise.

Only That Day Dawns to Which We Are Awake

“From the east comes the sun, bringing a new and unspoiled day.” So begins our responsive reading from a moment ago, by Universalist minister Clinton Lee Scott. The sun, which “has already circled the earth and looked upon distant lands and far-away peoples. It has passed over mountain ranges; it has shone upon laborers; it has beheld proud cities; it has been witness to both good and evil; it has seen.”

And what has it seen, recently?

It has seen a world in transformation because of technological innovations of the past 20 years, like the Internet, digital media, and wireless networks. Hyperconnectivity is now a way of life: the constant chatter of the Net, planetary monkey mind, videos going viral. Bad and good mixed together: smallest personal actions tracked by giant marketing and homeland security databases; but then you have Twitter posts crying foul during the recent Iranian elections, escaping all censoring by an oppressive government, gathering and galvanizing protesters for action.

The sun has seen. This too: following on the heels of rampant greed and speculation, a worldwide recession, the worst in recent memory, a domino effect of one country after another finding itself struggling with factory closures, job losses, credit crunches, Wall Street impacting and being impacted by markets thousands of miles away. Here in Atlanta, even as the larger economy improves, budgets are still tight at home, almost 10% unemployment on our streets.

The sun has seen. This as well: an arguably illegal war in Iraq, more than six years old, run poorly, with unacceptable human and financial costs, sparking more thirst for terror rather than dampening it. Though now, with the end of this war in sight, the focus shifts to the even older war in Afghanistan and its uncertain prospects. Our President juggling way too many balls right now, and this is a big one.

The sun has seen. So much to be seen. The justice principle of affordable health care for all, alive in most economically advanced countries in the world, struggling to live here in America, facing the meat-grinder of politics. Scare tactics and misinformation all over the place. Charges of “death panels.” Charges of socialism coming out of the mouths of town hall protesters, or worse. “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” yells the person who doesn’t seem to realize that Medicare is a government program—a government-run, taxpayer-funded, single-payer health insurance program. Anger and despair all over. Can’t help but wonder: is politics broken? Affordable health care for all was first proposed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912—and it’s still not a done deal.

All this, the sun has seen. All of it and more. Yet, says Clinton Lee Scott, it is not overwhelmed. “Now, unsullied from its tireless journey, it comes to us, messenger of the morning, harbinger of a new day.” And really, the profound and essential question facing us is: can we join the sun in its new morning? Can we rise with it, receive its message of a new dawn? Do we believe that there can be a new morning for us in this world, despite all? Do we believe there can be a new morning in America?

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” This is a line from Henry David Thoreau. Unless the sleeper wakes up, there can be no morning, just perpetual midnight. Unless the sleeper awakens to the abundant truths and powers of the soul. Truths and powers each and every one of us is born with, establishing our freedom to respond to the trials of life with courage and creativity and generosity. Enabling us to be free in our minds and hearts even if we find ourselves surrounded with unfreedom on all sides. Empowering us to be heroes in an unheroic age. There is a dawning day that we can experience here and now—we can join the sun in its new morning—but only if we awaken to it. Only if the sleeper wakes up.

This is Transcendentalism. This is the vision that inspired our 19th century spiritual ancestors like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, Bronson Alcott, James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, and more. The sun that rises every morning symbolizing the sun within. If we can wake up to that, our lives will be transformed. And so will the world. Personal growth and social justice just two sides of the same coin of spirituality. This is Transcendentalism.

It’s a message that is as vital now as it ever was. Transcendentalism is uniquely Unitarian Universalist—it came from our people and our tradition—and we need to be giving this treasure to ourselves and to the larger world. We need to be good stewards of this. Lots of ways of breaking through with generosity, and this is a crucial one. That’s why we’re going to be focusing on Henry David Thoreau’s Walden during this year’s First Sunday services. Live with this classic of Transcendentalist spirituality all year long. Let it enter into us and change us. See where it takes us. Allow ourselves to be surprised.

So we begin. A good start is to consider what the sun in the days of the original Transcendentalists saw, as it shone specifically upon the place and time in which they lived: New England in the 1830s and 1840s—Boston and the surrounding area, especially Concord. What did the sun see?

For one thing, radical change. Before 1830, everything had been primarily local, from one’s sense of identity to working conditions and the manufacture of goods. It took time for messages to go from point A to point B. It took time to get anywhere. But this all came to an end. The invention of the telegraph allowed for news to cross far distances instantly. Then there was the railroad, newly built tracks crisscrossing the land, bringing with it a new sense of national identity. Also new economic opportunity, allowing sons and daughters to leave home to find wage-earning jobs in the cities or in the also new textile mills of New England. Leading to the transient population in cities rising at an alarming rate. Unregulated working conditions becoming worse and worse, even as more and more money was being made. Old ways lost, one by one. Old traditions and comforts and securities. Sons and daughters no longer automatically doing what their parents had done before them, and their parents before them. Radical change in every sphere of life. Bad and good consequences all mixed together.

This is what the sun saw in its journey in the 1830s and 1840s. Also this: economic meltdown. Robert Sullivan, author of the recent book The Thoreau You Don’t Know, says that “To imagine Thoreau and his writing without considering the economy is a little like thinking about The Grapes of Wrath without considering the Great Depression.” Prior to 1837, the stock market had been roaring with speculation; government had expanded the money supply, had expanded credit and loans. But the bubble popped. Said a Unitarian minister at the time, “We were in the midst of peace, apparent prosperity, and progress when, after extensive individual failures, the astounding truth burst upon us like a thunderbolt … that we were a nation of bankrupts, and a bankrupt nation.” Economics, as you can imagine, was on everyone’s mind. Just remember this when you start reading Walden for November’s sermon: the first chapter—the longest of them all—is entitled, “Economy.”

See where I’m going here? The Transcendentalists lived in a time that echoes our time with almost eerie precision. A world in transformation, economic meltdown, and also this: an illegal war. Influential writers and politicians in the 1840s believed in what they called America’s “manifest destiny,” which was (quote) “to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” They were hungry for more land—land that could expand slavery in the South, mind you—and it just so happened that Mexico was struggling to maintain control of one of its territories, called Texas. Exactly the kind of situation people believing in manifest destiny wanted to take advantage of. And they did. On May 11, 1846, President James K. Polk claimed that Mexican forces had attacked American troops in United States territory, and this meant war. However, it was not true; a certain young and lanky politician from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln objected by saying, “Show me the spot!” Another politician from Georgia, Robert Toombs, cried out, “This war is nondescript…. We charge the President with usurping the war-making power… with seizing a country [namely, Texas]… which had been for centuries, and was then in the possession of the Mexicans…. Let us put a check upon this lust of dominion.” That’s what Robert Toombs said. The war was illegal, a shameless land grab.

And underlying it all was the travesty of slavery. The strangest bedfellow to the moral vision of nothing less than the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Yet what the sun saw in the time of the Transcendentalists was the very country we declared independence from—England—abolishing slavery in all her colonies in 1834. England, living out our expressed moral vision, while America was fighting an illegal war in order to expand slavery. America, hypocritical, not at the forefront of social change, but internally conflicted, confused, falling behind.

The times were troubling and overwhelming. Radical change, economic meltdown, illegal war, inability to live out the American moral vision of justice for all. And here is what the Transcendentalists thought: all were symptoms of spiritual and moral sleepwalking or, at the very least, not effectively solved when people are in the sleepwalking state. Albert Einstein spoke like a true Transcendentalist when he said, “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.” Absolutely. “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”

Listen to a passage from the founding document of Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature, published in 1836: “[A man—and by this he means everyone] works in the world with his understanding alone. He lives in it, and masters it by penny wisdom; and he that works most in it, is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage. His relation to nature, his power over it, is through the understanding; as by manure; the economic use of fire, wind, water, and the mariner’s needle; steam, coal, chemical agriculture; the repairs of the human body by the dentist and the surgeon. This is such a resumption of power, as if a banished king should buy his territories inch by inch, instead of vaulting at once into his throne.” In other words, people can’t become fully human if they don’t expand their minds. If the only thing that’s real for you is surfaces; if the only way you know how to relate to the world is as something to be materially manipulated and used, sold, bought, and traded, then there will never be an end to economic meltdowns, illegal wars, and hypocritical travesties of justice—and forget about weathering the storms of radical change. You—a birthright king—will remain banished. The kingdom is rightfully yours, yet, absurdly, you think you must buy it back inch by inch. Stay locked within what Emerson calls “penny wisdom,” and that will be your fate.

And it is tragic, because so much more is possible. Besides “penny wisdom,” there is another capacity of mind: an intuitive, holistic capacity—very different. Turn it on, and at once, we vault to the throne that is our birthright. The world in our eyes becomes transformed into a place of beauty and possibility; subtle patterns of meaning step forward and we are amazed; we discover an inner freedom and peace that no external adversity can shake; we realize the difference between the ways and laws of our society and the higher law of conscience. “Crossing a bare common,” says Emerson, “in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perennial youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel nothing can befall me in life,– no disgrace, no calamity … which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed in the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,– all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” That is what Emerson says. Emerson has vaulted straight to his throne, and we can as well. But only if we open up to the world in a way that’s very different from “penny wisdom.” Only if we expand our minds.

In other words: “self-culture.” That’s the phase that Transcendentalists used to describe the work of waking up, and becoming fully human. Thoreau himself started on this work soon after he checked Nature out of the library at Harvard College in April of 1837, the year he graduated. Emerson’s message was received. Thoreau himself would put things like this: “Our limbs indeed have room enough but it is our souls that rust in a corner. Let us migrate interiorly without intermission, and pitch our tent each day nearer the western horizon.”

But how exactly do we do that—“migrate interiorly”? Given what we have already heard from Emerson—given what we already know about Thoreau—it should come as no surprise that one main answer is to submerge ourselves in nature. Stop dissecting it and start listening. Allow it to reveal to us the depths of our own souls. The Transcendentalists believed that the interdependent web of all existence is not merely a fine-tuned fitting-together of external processes and parts; nature literally has soul, and this soul speaks to the soul of humanity. This is exactly why Thoreau could say, “I feel that I draw nearest to understanding the great secret of my life in my closest intercourse with nature.” Nature is externalized mind; and mind internalized nature. Here is the truest Bible; written ones can only take a person so far. The fullest revelation of human nature is to be found in … nature.

Other self-culture practices included small group conversations, in which people could share and integrate their discoveries in nature—put the pieces together, see what was implied about their sense of self and identity, their relationships, and larger social conditions. Disciplined conversation, journal writing, walking, leisure that allows the soul to speak, and lots and lots of reading. You’ll never meet a bunch of mystics who read so much. Then there were the social experiments in enlightened living. Brook Farm comes to mind: a cooperative community consisting of teachers, students, and workers engaged in the labor of farming together with the labor of self-culture. Then there was Thoreau’s own social experiment of one: his time at Walden, lasting two years and two months.

“We must live in the present,” said Thoreau, “launch ourselves on every wave, find our eternity in each moment.” “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake.” The call is to enlightened individualism. But we do the Transcendentalists a severe injustice if we mistake all this as selfishness—as an every-man-for-himself mentality—as either withdrawal from community to live in isolation, or puffing oneself up and feeling entitled to impose one’s ideas (or should I say eccentricities) upon others. Our congregations have directly suffered from such misunderstandings, as when people think that they can be perfectly fine Unitarian Universalists all by themselves, or when they are so impressed by their own brilliance that they forget to listen when others have something to say—or they simply forget to be decent. But Transcendentalist self-culture, at its best, is about self-rule and transformative human relationships; it’s about becoming free in your heart and spirit so you can help spread freedom in the larger world. Walden Pond was just on the edge of Concord, after all; just a stone’s throw away. And Thoreau went there not to repudiate society once and for all but to learn how to be in society in healthier ways.

The times were challenging, then as now. From time immemorial, the sun has circled the earth, looked upon distant lands, passed over mountain ranges, shone over laborers, beheld proud cities, witnessed both good and evil. Now, unsullied from its tireless journey, it comes to us, messenger of the morning. Let’s join it in its rise, help create a new morning in this world. Continue as never before the work of self-culture in our little corner of the universe. Learn how to transcend “penny wisdom” so we can be healed and made whole. Transcendentalism is our home-grown Unitarian Universalist spirituality that shows us how.