The Colours of the Spirit

It seems overly cliché to bemoan our increasing, blinding reliance upon technology, our advancing inevitable shift into virtual space. On one hand it is tempting to dream of a world in which we can return to the land, that Jeffersonian vision of the simple rural life, in which we are not tainted and corrupted by urban vices. Lives in which we can be intimately connected to nature, not enslaved to corporations, but rather dictate our own destinies. Many Transcendentalists of the 19th century were quite taken with this notion, and it still endures today as a thread of the environmental movement.

What will cities in the future look like?

The problem is that such a romantic notion is hopelessly flawed; who would sacrifice the perpetual engagement the modern world has to offer, to return to some idyllic country life [1] – however edifying spiritually that supposedly is? Furthermore, there’s the environmental cost. It might seem counter-intuitive to you, but the average carbon footprint cost for a city dweller is considerably lower than for someone who lives in the countryside.

It has only been in the last couple of decades that the global population of people living in cities has surpassed that of those living in the country. That ecological time bomb we all hear about, if we overcome it, it will be because people are in cities not despite it. And of course, the city-dwelling population is only going up. I think these facts pose an interesting challenge to our Unitarian Transcendentalist heritage, especially given that communing with the divine through nature has endured as a consistent theme within our movement.

When ‘Nature’ was written by Emerson in the 19th Century and Henry David Thoreau went and lived in his cabin for those two years to get closer to nature and to live ‘deliberately’, the urban population in New England had just tipped over the 50% mark. Now it is north of 80% in the USA as a whole.

Emerson’s book begins by setting out that one simple question: if the great prophets and sages of old beheld God and nature face to face, through their eyes, why should we not also enjoy an original relationship with the universe?

And my rather pessimistic answer is, because we are irrevocably alienated from nature, we could never return to the land in any meaningful way. In fact, to do so would be detrimental to humanity. People can never be any more than nature’s tourists. How then can we know God?

19th Century New England painting by Mary Blood Mellen

Because New England urbanisation was so low, Emerson could assume his audience had experienced nature first hand, even if only in a meaningfully intimate way in their youth. We cannot assume that today. If people today are biblically illiterate, then perhaps they are illiterate to the beauty of nature also. Perhaps we assume an innate reverence for nature which the urban dwellers cannot even begin to recognise. Or at least, they may lack the language to recognise it. We may be a community so in touch with the supreme significance of nature’s beauty that it proves an insurmountable hurdle to those that cannot see it.

Take a community that values the biblical narrative; they would not abandon it when faced with the biblically illiterate. But rather they would strive to invite people into that shared conversation, to educate, inculturate, not assume anything. So we might do the same when it comes to the spiritual language of nature’s beauty. And part of that bridge-building process is also to learn cultural languages which are alien to us – as I have suggested before, film, art, and technology, are such languages that perhaps the urban dwellers of today have a more innate grasp upon.

How can we impart the wisdom of nature to a people unfamiliar with nature? Part of that must lie in bringing nature’s beauty into urban spaces. This is most obviously done by encouraging people into their city’s green spaces, but also in smaller ways, such as bringing flowers into the Meeting House. In this way, we might practice the appreciation of Nature.

Part of Nature’s beauty, as Emerson explains, lies in its unattainable nature. You may own this land, but you cannot own the horizon, you cannot own the stars above. This invokes a youth of the heart, and in turn, it offers us a blank slate. The same feeling is invoked in Mary Oliver’s poem: the dance goes on, with no discernable beginning or end, there is only being present. Practicing the presence of Nature then offers us a fresh beginning, recharges us, and offers us the capacity to move forward and accept what has past, shedding the day-to-day stress of life. It further brings our focus off judging ourselves, others, and situations. The more you appreciate, the less you judge.

Ipswich Meeting House pulpit.

Some of us have the privilege to find solitude in uninhabited nature, to be there so wholly and intentionally that we surpass mere admiration, and feel it envelop our senses. Perhaps such people have a calling to be nature’s ambassadors, to communicate their appreciation and the wisdom it offers to a people who can never know it to that degree.

The notion often surfaces that the beauty nature has to offer cannot ever be surpassed by the creations of humanity. And I wonder if that is, in fact, true. Perhaps the highest forms of art and beauty are in cities, not outside them. Perhaps Transcendentalist thought has historically missed the true significance of humanity’s creative power. In elevating nature to such a height, and regarding nature as the principal way of communing with the divine, we may blindside ourselves to beauty in its multiplicity of forms – maybe in the cinema, or in art galleries, or restaurants, experiencing the transcendent is just as conceivable, just as valid.

If trends continue as they are, then in my lifetime the population of the entire world will be in cities. No doubt the rate of migration into our cities will level out before then, but none the less our future is squarely in the urban space. What does our movement have to say to a world like that? Do we wish to stand prophetically resistant to such a world? Or do we wish to find our voice in a brave new one?

Amen.

[1] I think this point does deserve a footnote. You might be protesting, “I would sacrifice modern convenience for the idyllic country life”. And that may well be true. My point is that you are therefore part of a dwindling minority.  

Transcendentalism, Fourierism and the Individualistic Impulse

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1845 painting of Brook Farm by Josiah Wolcott.

The French socialist philosopher Charles Fourier, who created a blue print for the future of society (as I explored in my previous blog - Click Here), was popularized in America by the utopian socialist author Albert Brisbane (1809 – 1890). His publications brought Fourierism to the attention of the Transcendentalists, most notably George Ripley (1802 – 1880), the former Unitarian minister, and founder of the social utopian experiment of Brook Farm, Massachusetts.

Brook Farm was initially set up in the late 1830s, as a joint stock company, in which everyone invested $500 apiece in the farm, and therein shared democratically in the governance and profits of the farm. Initially the idea was simply to share in the labour in order to minimise it, so that the farm’s participants would have ample time for leisure and their own academic pursuits.

By the early 1840s however, the farm had begun to struggle financially, and Fourierism was advanced by Albert Brisbane, a regular visitor of the farm, to solve the problem. Fourierism’s systematic approach, with timetables and a strictly communal foundation, led to labour requirements being tightened on the farm, and despite the economic difficulties the undertaking of an ambitious building project in keeping with the Fourierism system – a self-contained compound known as a Phalanstery. The farm immediately became the flagship for American Fourierism upon its official adoption of the system by the winter of 1843.

It is curious that Transcendentalists got themselves swept up into a community of this kind, given that they were customarily hostile to any compromise to their personal liberty. But it appears as if George Ripley’s brand of Transcendentalism emphasized the centrality of community from the get-go. As early as 1840 Ralph Waldo Emerson himself had sent a letter to Ripley declining the invitation to join the farm, as it seemed both too utilitarian and unrealistic, citing the benefits of solitude - a central theme of Emeron’s book ‘Self-Reliance’ which was published the next year.

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Gorge Ripley in his post-Brook Farm days

Brook Farm then, was a reaction against the individualistic impulse of Transcendentalist thought, and indeed this journey into Fourierism had a marked effect upon Transcendentalism at large. Transcendentalism came to recognise that true freedom could only be attained within a communal context. Emerson however, remained a notable exception to this trend, along with Henry David Thoreau, who I explored in a previous post (Click Here). This shift is most clearly visible in the work of the Transcendentalist William Henry Channing, a close friend of Ripley, who stressed that the central call upon Christians was philanthropy and communitarian socialism.

As for Brook Farm itself however, insurmountable debt and declining numbers had the farm on the brink of ruin. The real blow came on the 3rd March 1846 when their nearly completed Phalanstery burned to the ground. The community dispersed; some remained in Boston as Fourierism activists, and others moved to join the North American Phalanx, a similar community in New Jersey. George Ripley himself took up a journalist post, writing a Gossip column for the New York Tribune, all the while paying off outstanding Brook Farm debt. Disheartened, he never wrote on Theology or Philosophy again. In his later years he established himself as a literary critic of note; this brought immense success. He died a millionaire.  

Narcissistic Solitude?

Replica of Thoreau's cabin near Walden Pond

In Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) we have a philosophy of rugged self-reliance, pure individualism, in which one’s best self flourishes, free of political and religious allegiance. True community then, is found in the communing of real individuals – in shared recognition of the divine within each of us.

In a desire to actualize this philosophy, Thoreau took to the woods for two years (1845 – 1847), living on the shores of Walden Pond, Massachusetts, on a piece of land owned by Ralf Waldo Emerson.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

This romantic idea of throwing off the shackles of contemporary life is undeniably appealing. In the history of religion there are countless examples of individuals taking to the wilderness, such as the desert fathers, in search of solitude. In Thoreau’s masterwork ‘Walden’, Thoreau recounts his time in the woods, and expounds upon the conceptual underpinning of this venture. The real gem within the work though is the chapter on solitude itself.

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

I both find this idea agreeable, for it certainly aligns with my disposition, and yet partly concerning, for it seems to me to indulge a narcissistic impulse. There seems to me to be a fine line between the self-edifying eremitic life, and simply disengaging from society for self-centred reasons. And yet I am unsure. Perhaps it is only perceived as self-centred by those not brave enough to disengage from society – those invested in society must justify their choice. Or, perhaps the value of extended periods of solitude is to be found in the insights such individuals bring back to society, such as Thoreau’s work itself.

Solitude can be a deadly counsellor, or friend of infinite worth. Perhaps any lack of true solitude within our current society should be taken as a societal ill – we are tentatively never alone - our ups and downs can be learnt of vicariously all the time.  And yet perhaps the lack of true solitude impairs true connection – in our destitution we cannot really be known.

So I return to Thoreau and the Transcendentalists’ notion of the ‘communing of real individuals’. Perhaps the lure of tribalism blinds us from the true value of solitude, which in turn robs us of truly communing at all.