I come to writing this essay in a melancholic mood, and as ever, I come in search of that elusive something. It is Advent 2021. Advent is the season for waiting and expectation, and I, at this moment in my life find myself waiting. Waiting somewhat against my will. Waiting for the next chapter of my life to begin.
In Christian terms, Advent is when we performatively await the birth of Christ, and eschatologically wait for his second coming…
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The young Henry David Thoreau
Picking up from last week, while Emerson was in England meeting his intellectual hero William Wordsworth, a young 18 year-old-man called David Thoreau was taking his entrance exam to get into Harvard University. He was accepted, barely. While at Harvard, Thoreau studied a broad range of subjects. He focused though mostly on languages, learning Latin, Greek, Italian, French, German, and Spanish. In Thoreau’s penultimate year at Harvard, Ralph Waldo Emerson published his seminal work, ‘Nature’. ‘Nature’ contends that society, which takes us away from nature, destroys our sense of wholeness; that our own spiritual well-being is intrinsically wrapped up with nature. We are part of nature. No human being, no matter how much history has elevated them, or even deified them, is above nature. Take the genteel Wordsworth we met last week. The temptation is to read his poetry, and elevate him in our minds; imagining his verse being of such splendour - coming forth from the mind of a profound genius - the temptation is to imbue Wordsworth with an almost mythic status. But in truth, the Wordsworth we met last week was a gentle and relatable, kind, man, but he was just a man. Nature then is like a great leveller. Nature is in you and I, just as it was in Wordsworth, Emerson, and Thoreau. We do ourselves a great disservice when we allow the weight of the perceived greatness of our forebears to shut down the possibility of individual originality. We must think for ourselves, and not simply conform to the status quo, or traditions, for their own sake. We must live from within, trusting in our own intuitions, reconnecting afresh with the sublime Nature has on offer. When Emerson’s ‘Nature’ was published in 1836, it was immediately recognised as a masterpiece. Anyone who read it could not help feeling more wide awake to the beauty and meaning of creation. And this was certainly the case for David Thoreau, or as he came to be known, Henry David Thoreau, who was enamoured by the book; it shaped everything which was to follow.
Engraving of Harvard College, 1767
The subsequent year, in 1837, Thoreau graduated from Harvard University. That year’s commencement speech was given by none other than Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his speech, titled ‘The American Scholar’, Emerson restates the central ideas of ‘Nature’, emphasising the need for America to throw off its reverential attitude to European intellectual culture. It was time for America to forge its own literary destiny; to read books, yes, but to no longer mimic them. To find its true inspiration within the immensity of Nature. Inspired by Emerson’s work and address, Thoreau began to keep a journal, in which he recorded his daily life, thoughts, and observations of nature. This journal was the basis for everything Thoreau is now notable for - all his subsequent lectures and published works were first drafted in his journal. For next few years, Thoreau helped his father in his business as a pencil maker, and set up a small school he ran with his brother. But increasingly he was becoming active within Emerson’s Transcendental Club, becoming good friends with Emerson, despite being 14 years his junior. And in 1841 he was invited to move into Emerson’s household in Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived off and on for the next decade, officially as the ‘live-in handyman’, but evidently the real purpose was for Thoreau to benefit from Emerson’s support and advice, focusing, as he was, more and more on his writing. There were times when Emerson and Thoreau’s relationship became a bit strained, the primary cause of this tension though seems to have arisen due to the extent to which they idealised one another. They thought so highly of one another that they could not help falling short of each other’s expectations. To Emerson, Henry David Thoreau was a man of such potential, any idle moment was an insult to that potential. Indeed, at times the intellectual intensity between the two men must have been unbearable.
The woods by Walden Pond
It was during this period that Emerson purchased the land around Walden Pond, and in March of 1845 Thoreau began building himself a small cabin there. As he most famously put it “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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...” And so began the two year, two month, two day, Walden pond experiment. As I mentioned last week, the Romanticism movement was in reaction against the industrial revolution, against applying a mechanistic, cold logic to life, working to a clock, in which you measured productivity by the hour, and divided labour into delineated tasks. Was society, and industry, and the clock, and maximising productivity, not diminishing our humanity? Thoreau, in going to the pond, was able in a small way to step back in time, to worry less about everyday affairs, and so devote more time to his writing. It also of course gave him the opportunity to put Emerson’s words to the test, to live in closer proximity to the divine, closer proximity to nature, to live to the rhythm of nature. In his actions we find a model of how to live simpler lives, free of excess, living sustainably, in an environmentally conscious way. Thoreau has been regarded as the first modern environmentalist. In 1847 Thoreau left the pond, going back to live in Emerson’s household, and then a year later moved back to his parent’s home. However, it is worth pointing out that all these places around the town of Concord, Massachusetts, are within small area. The walk from Emerson’s home to Walden pond is only 30 minutes, and similarly the walk from Emerson’s house to Thoreau’s parents’ house was about 40 minutes.
A box of pencils from J. Thoreau & Company.
In this period then, after the Walden experiment, when Thoreau was in his early 30s, he once again began working in the production of pencils. Thoreau’s pencils are actually very notable. At this time, his pencils were considered the best. The reason for that was that his pencils did not merely contain graphite, but rather a combination of New England graphite and clay, making them stronger. The combining of graphite and clay in pencils was invented, or at least reinvented, by Thoreau, and is still used to this day. When he wasn’t making pencils, he was working on his most notable book, ‘Walden’, about his time by Walden Pond. Unlike Emerson’s ‘Nature’, which was a big success on publication, when Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ eventually came out, it was a flop. Despite being a more notable book today, at the time it was met with indifference. As Thoreau moved into his late 30s, he had to come to terms with the fact that he would not be the major proponent of transcendentalism he longed to be. And so, disheartened, he turned his attention towards more practical matters, political issues of justice in his own day, most importantly the abolitionist cause. He wrote his second most notable work, ‘Essays on Civil Disobedience’, in which Thoreau advocated for a non-violent, passive resistance approach to slavery. He wrote this essay against the backdrop of America’s 11th president, James K. Polk, who believed strongly in the necessity of slavery. His was a strongly militaristic presidency; he declared war on Mexico to secure the Texas border, and came close to launching the states into a third war with Britain. Thoreau defined himself politically in opposition to Polk. At the heart of this essay, Thoreau asks the question, which again seems exceedingly pertinent to now, what should citizens do when confronted with a president they wholly disagree with? After all, the president was elected, and therefore he was the rightly and democratically appointed man for the job. The prevailing sentiment was that as the majority had spoken, everyone in opposition was obliged to keep silent and respect the will of the majority. Thoreau wanted to challenge this kind of thinking. He believed people should not be blind nationalists following obediently the authority structures in place, but rather be individual thinkers, directed by their own conscience - not just on polling day, but every day. And as such, as individuals directed by our own conscience, we should, when confronted with political authority we disagree with, find our own ways of resisting said authority by non-violent means. To sing our opposition, to march in opposition, to speak in opposition. In 1908, a lawyer from India read Thoreau’s essay ‘On Civil Disobedience’. It was to have a lasting impact on him, and ultimately upon his country of India. His name was Mahatma Gandhi.
His grave in Sleepy Hollow cemetery
By Thoreau’s late 30s he had begun to sufferer from tuberculosis. He grew weaker, and died in 1862, when he was only 44 years old. His death was not widely reported. Despite today being regarded as one of America's greatest literary artists, he died practically unknown. Thoreau's funeral eulogy was given by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a eulogy which focused almost entirely on all that was worst about the man. Emerson painted a picture of a man who was cold, brittle, and anti-social, a picture which tainted Thoreau’s reputation, and resulted in his work not being read for a century. Thoreau's work was never about building a linear or logical argument, it was about one’s personal experience in the face of nature, it was about those isolated moments of sudden awareness. Thoreau’s work differs from Emerson’s in a number of ways, most obviously in being far more grounded, and practical. Thoreau invites us afresh to consider our relationship to Nature, one another, and also to the state.
‘Mist’ - a poem by Henry David Thoreau
Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream-drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,—
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men’s fields.
Amen.
The young Emerson
In 1832, the architect of American intellectual culture, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was going through a dark patch in his life. He had just lost his first wife to tuberculosis, and he was only 29 – same age as me; he was, at the time, the Unitarian minister of a prominent Boston church, and his ministry was suffering as a result. Full of grief, and feeling lost for purpose, he took to his pulpit each Sunday to berate his congregation. His sermons were becoming increasingly gloomy and stern. He was burning bridges fast, falling out with parishioners left, right, and centre. Ralph Waldo Emerson may well be the most important Unitarian to ever have lived, and yet here we find him in a very destructive mode of being, embittered at the world. It’s always interesting I think to read about great people of history at their darkest moments. From our historical omniscient vantage point, we know that things get a lot better for Emerson; we know he has about fifty years ahead of him being a very successful writer and speaker, but in this moment he does not know that. For Emerson, in the light of his pain and uncertainty, the world seems to be closing in. He felt unrooted, lonely, and his job seemed uncertain, and so he threw in the towel, packed his bags, and on Christmas day 1832 embarked for England. In the early 1800s getting from Boston to England would have meant six gruelling weeks at sea. When he eventually arrived in England in 1833 he visited both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. I don’t think we can underestimate the significance this voyage has had upon Unitarianism, and even upon the world. Without this journey, the world is unimaginably different. That may seem like an over exaggerated assertion, but given the shift this pilgrimage prompted in Emerson, and the subsequent impact he had upon religious philosophy, literature, national identity, politics, and the Unitarian movement itself, it is not an unreasonable claim. Without this voyage, what worship looks like each Sunday here in the meeting house would be very different; indeed we may not even be here at all.
William Wordsworth
By the time Emerson did arrive in England, Coleridge and Wordsworth were both in their 60s, and well established on the literary scene. The poem ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, or ‘Daffodils’ as it is more popularly known, was already a celebrated English poem. Coleridge and Wordsworth were both leading lights of British Romanticism. Romanticism was an artistic and literary movement of this period, the early 1800s. It was basically a reaction against the industrial revolution, and the hard-headed rationalism of people like John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith. In other words, it was resisting the kind of cold rationalism that reduced us to being merely cogs in a machine, or numbers on a screen to be manipulated. Romanticism wanted to elevate the value of our subjective sense of things. It’s a conflict society and organisations repeatedly knock up against when making decisions - should we be basing them solely on what makes most economic or business sense, or should we be allowing our intuitive sense, or other more metaphysical claims like the inherent value of humanity, or the inherent value of sentient life, to have a bearing on our decision-making process also? Since the industrial revolution these kinds of questions have never not been pertinent, but in recent months, in light of the Grenfell tower fire for instance, societal consciousness in this area seems to have risen.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Following the enlightenment, the notion of gods sitting on other planes of existence, rewarding the good, and punishing the bad, became intellectually unsatisfying. The danger was, many intellectuals extrapolated that to mean that the world was therefore a soulless place, red in tooth and claw, an ever-unfolding Darwinian battle, a cold machine suited to some cold hard logic. The trouble is, people cannot live in a world like that. Romanticism was an attempt to redress that imbalance, an attempt to hold rationalism in one hand, while at the same time recognising the great value of love and beauty: the value of poetry and words, the value of ‘how it sits with you’, and ‘what your gut sense tells you’, the value of spiritual language, the value of feelings, and hopes, and dreams, and in so doing, elevating the significance of ‘Nature’. Communing with our primordial self through nature, or communing with God through nature; ‘God’ for Wordsworth being a metaphor for mystery, or like Spinoza, a word to be equated with Nature or everything. But again, the line between a ‘belief in God’, and Atheism, is incredibly thin. Coleridge called Wordsworth a ‘Semi-Atheist’. For Wordsworth then, a belief in God was essentially when individual people turn their hearts towards love and the good for no logical reason. That is God.
Dove Cottage
Okay, back to Emerson’s visit to England. He first visited Samuel Taylor Coleridge in London, and was very disappointed. 60-year-old Coleridge was a large, bombastic man, and Emerson said “the visit was more spectacle rather than a conversation, of no use beyond the satisfaction of my curiosity”. Coleridge merely spouted nonsense for about an hour, before Emerson was able to escape back onto London’s streets. His encounter with Wordsworth was far more satisfying. Finding his way to the lake district, he moved along the picturesque tracks. Feeling inspired and uplifted by the countryside, he walked to Dove Cottage resting in a thickly wooded hillside, where William Wordsworth lived. He knocked unannounced at the door. Wordsworth was a plainly dressed, elderly man with white hair. He was kindly and serene, warm, and generous with his time. Emerson was invited in, and they sat talking by the fire. Their conversations meandered where you would imagine, they talked about Coleridge, and the fact that his poetry was unnecessarily complicated, they talked about politics of course - Wordsworth lamented that America seemed obsessed with money in a very unhealthy way. Wordsworth recited some of his poetry to Emerson, poetry Emerson was very familiar with, and some new poetry, never yet recited. When it was time for Emerson to leave, Wordsworth walked along with him, accompanying him for a mile before turning back ‘with great kindness’.
The Emerson who returned to America later that year was a changed man. Within three years, he had begun giving his lectures, married his second wife, and written his most significant book, ‘Nature’. He was doing the important work of the poet, which Emerson described as ‘that insightful [person], who can pierce this rotten diction, and fasten words again to visible things.’ Weaving new meanings, and new narratives. He formed the Transcendental club, to discuss, in an open and free manner, issues of spirituality and philosophy. Transcendentalism empowered individuals to do no less than weigh religion for themselves, to form their own faith as their conscience led. Ralph Waldo Emerson directly inspired many artists, writers, visionaries, and poets, none more so than Henry David Thoreau. If Emerson was the architect of American intellectual culture, setting forth the theoretical framework, Henry David Thoreau was the man who lived it, and embodied it. But for that chapter, you’ll need to wait till next week…
Amen.
In one respect the Lammas Communion service can trace its roots back to the pre-Christian Britain isles, and in another respect it is a tradition which has its roots right here in this Meeting House.
Religious history has a long tradition of theft - the co-opting of old religious practices to serve the spiritual and religious needs of the day. Why does Christmas fall on the day it does? Why do Christian priests put on elaborate vestments? Why are old churches built where they are? The reason for all of these is Paganism; pre-existing pagan traditions.
Co-opting old practices, old traditions, into the new, adds gravitas. It connects us with our ancestors, and it makes the politically astute move of undercutting their old ways. Take old churches - why are they built where they are? Because that is where the old pagan groves were. Spiritual space is very important, and if Christian churches are built upon those old pagan groves, the rootedness of a people to a space is severed. And so Christian ascendancy is achieved.
Our European pre-Christian ancestors saw a world infused with spirit. At this time the womb of Mother Earth brought forth a bounty of grains and fruits. The first wheats of the harvest are cut down, ground into flour, and baked into a loaf of bread. And so Mother Earth is praised, thanks are given, for once more creation has brought forth sustenance to our bodies. Once more Mother Earth has provided us with everything we need.
The chain of memory which connected this ancient ‘loaf’ tradition to the now has been lost to the ages. The name of the tradition has been lost, and what the tradition consisted of has been lost. The residual sense of it was co-opted into Christianity, and named Lammas; Lammas meaning ‘loaf mass’, a Christian Eucharist in which a loaf of bread is used, as opposed to wafers, to celebrate the first fruits of the harvest. In some Anglican churches today, this Lammas celebration will be taking place.
To quote the Anglican liturgy for today: “Brothers and sisters in Christ, the people of God in ancient times presented to the Lord and offering of the first-fruits as a sign of their dependence upon God for their daily bread. At this Lammastide, we bring a newly baked loaf as our offering in thanksgiving to God for his faithfulness. Jesus said, ‘I am the bread of life; those who come to me shall never be hungry and those who believe in me shall never thirst.’”
The other week I was asked, do Unitarians do communion? ‘Yes… well, kind of… well, some of us do…’ The question needed a fuller answer, so here goes.
The catholic priest presides at the altar of God. He mediates between man and God, offering absolution, and inviting the people of God to the altar of God to partake in the gifts of God: the bread and the wine. Outside of the Church there is no salvation.
During the European Middle ages the Catholic Church dominated European civilization. But that hold upon ultimate power was to be undone, by a monk - Martin Luther. Martin Luther was the catalyst of the protestant reformation. The central drive of the reformation was the idea that each individual was responsible for their own salvation. You had to read the Bible for yourself; you had to determine what God required of you, and follow your own conscience. Unitarianism today is the logical culmination of this initial radical reformation impulse.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)
The priest was no longer needed to the bridge the gap between the individual and God, because each individual was to seek his or her own salvation. “The priesthood and the prophethood of all believers.” The radical reformation led to many ideas which are familiar to us here: local autonomy, free discussion, the rejection of coercion, the rejection of the ideal of uniformity, the protection of minorities, and the separation of church and state. Communion too was democratised. It was moved from the altar presided over by the priest, to the table amongst the people. In the 19th century communion was taking place in most Unitarian churches on a weekly basis, either in the main service or after the service. But some began to be openly critical of the ritual.
On September 9th 1832 a 29 year old Ralph Waldo Emerson got into the pulpit at the Unitarian church in Boston where he was the minister. His topic was the Lord’s Supper. In summary, he said that the Lord’s Supper (or communion) is naturally so divisive - who should partake and who should not? When should the ritual be celebrated - weekly, monthly, yearly? The Quakers don’t have communion; no ritual is needed for them to be more in touch with God. And did Jesus really intend to establish the institution? There is no indication that it was to be a permanent feature of worship going forward. The Gospels never say as much. And why must the Lord’s Supper be practiced with such regularity, and not, say, foot washing, which takes place just prior to the last supper? What is the Kingdom of God? To eat bread and wine? Or to live in righteousness, peace and joy? And therefore he concluded that he should not wish to administer the ritual. His sermon ended: the trustees called an emergency meeting, and fired him.
Despite Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalists being critical of the institution, the practice did not tail off until the early 20th century. The rise in liberal theology and values amongst Unitarians corresponded to communion’s decline; more so in America than here. Where Communion was still practiced, it often did not include everyone actually eating and drinking the bread and wine. Rather the focus was put upon the symbolic act of breaking the bread and pouring out the wine.
Amongst Unitarian Universalists (our American brothers and sisters) communion has almost disappeared entirely. According to some statistics published in 2012 only 2% of churches have communion services. This makes sense within the American context, as the Unitarian Universalist religion has more explicitly departed from its Christian roots, unlike the UK Unitarian context which I could perhaps generalise by saying we draw upon the Christian tradition more than any other. But this obviously varies from church to church.
And so our movement’s relationship to communion now is a complicated one. Some of us find the ritual to have value, and some of us don’t. It would be odd, I think, to have an explicitly Christian communion ritual as the central focus of any main Sunday Unitarian service, as it would perhaps highlight division in an unhelpful way. But there is value in ritual. There is value in expressing the truths of the heart with our bodies, and not just our words. And so in response to this there has been a rise in ‘communion-like’ services, that do not carry with them any of that Christian theological baggage of body and blood, or sacrifice.
The most famous example of this is the flower communion service. But there are other examples too, which are mainly American in origin. There is a water communion service, in which everyone brings with them, from home, water which is symbolically intermingled in a single bowl. Or an Earth Communion service in which cups of soil are distributed to everyone to bring back to their gardens, to offer thanks to soil, thanks to Mother Earth. Or there is the Lammas Communion Service as we celebrate it here.
When our emeritus minister Cliff Reed established the Lammas Communion Service here in the Meeting House, he intentionally decoupled it from Christian communion, and restated its historical emphasis upon thanksgiving; a thanksgiving for the first fruits of the harvest, and the earth that brought it forth.
There is a harvest of the land.
We gather to give thanks for the food
which sustains our bodies.
There is a harvest of the spirit.
We gather to give thanks for the apostles
of truth, and love, and liberty.
The first-fruits of the land’s harvest
bring hope of nourishment;
dispel the fear of hunger.
The first-fruits of the spirit’s harvest
bring hope of a better world
for all humanity.
Amen.