Transcendentalism
Reverend Christina Sillari
December 2, 2012
Opening Words: Margaret Fuller
I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the
supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion,
of unseen powers. It needs not that I should ask the clairvoyant whether a spirit‐world projects
into ours. All around us, lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts, for
this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be
learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see
any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me.
There is marvel and charm enough in that for me.
Chalice Lighting
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in
secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will come out. That which dominates our
imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us
to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping, we are becoming.” Today we light our
chalice with the hope that we choose well what we worship.
Sermon
As many of you are aware, I grew up embedded in Christianity, in a city which is the most densely
populated place in New England. Cars and trucks, pavement and fences, sirens and smog filled my
daily life. I was taught that God lived inside churches protected by wood and stone. My core
principle of perception originated from outside of myself. Rules of conduct, beliefs, knowledge, and
values were learned from my family, the church, the school system, and working class culture. My
world in the city was small and constricting, lacking stars, solitude, and spaciousness. The density
of the urban world and the oppressiveness of the petrified thought forms around me left very little
room for the mystical.
Yet, every summer I was saved by the sea. My grandfather’s hard work and good fortune
manifested a summer home on the southern shore of Massachusetts. There I was free in body,
mind and spirit. My freedom emerged slowly over the many summers I spent walking alongside
crashing waves, lying on the dark beach looking for shooting stars, searching for crabs, starfish, and
sea glass among ancient rock, swimming in salty green water with a sense of timelessness. These
condensed spells with nature, balanced the grey grit of the city and allowed me to experience God,
the world, and human beings as limitless and interdependent. Sunsets, storms, and seagulls taught
me that if God exists, God lives in the natural world. Exploring both the beauty and cruelty of
nature with my senses taught me that if God exists, God lives inside of me, inside of everyone and
everything. Then upon return to the city I was able to see the holy where I could not see it before:
in persistent green, bursting through the cracks in the sidewalk, in the morning light streaming
through old dark houses, in colorful strained faces on crowded trains, in pigeons and squirrels
pilfering garbage, and in the intoxicated man smoking in the park.
The natural world taught me that God is transcendent, mysterious, and immanent. For me all life
contains the energy of God and God is bigger and beyond any conscious conception. There is a
quality to my theology that resonates strongly with the ideas of 19th century transcendentalist Ralph
Waldo Emerson. Emerson perceived God as intimately connected to human beings and nature.
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Historian Grant Wacker describes Emerson's belief: "God was best understood as a spirit, an ideal, a
breath of life; everywhere and always filling the world with the inexhaustible power of the divine
presence. God was as close as the atmosphere, as intimate as the 'blowing clover and the falling
rain.'"
My sermon today is a brief summary of the short lived theological movement known as
transcendentalism which was spearheaded by Unitarian Minister Ralph Waldo Emerson in the
1830’s and 40’s. This movement was brief but long lasting creating an impact on our faith tradition
and American culture as a whole. As we will see it began as a rebellion of the status quo of liberal
religion and shifted the focus of the divine from outside the self to inside the self. In light of this, I
am interested in how the holy, divine, spirit of life, shows up for you in your life. As you sit here
right now listening to me in this beautiful meeting house, where does the divine live for you? Is it
inside this building, outside in the garden, in my words, the choir’s voices, the musician’s notes, the
sharing of people’s joys and sorrows? Is it in your own heart?
Ralph Waldo Emerson did not find God in church. Even though he followed in his father’s
footsteps as a minister and was awarded the post of Minister of the Second (Unitarian) Church in
Boston. Even though his congregation was very fond of him and he was a brilliant preacher.
Because he believed in the humanity and not the divinity of Jesus he eventually refused to offer the
sacrament of communion during worship seeing it as an empty ritual that contained no personal
meaning for him. This caused quite a controversy in the church to the point that Emerson decided
to leave his ministry. He advised his congregation to call another minister that was more in
alignment with their views. But one of the reactionaries could not help saying, “We are sorry for
Mr. Emerson, but it certainly seems as if he is going to hell.” A supporter of Emerson’s immediately
retorted: “It does indeed look so. But I am sure of one thing-if Emerson goes to hell, he will so
change its climate that it will become a popular resort for all the good souls of Heaven.”
Emerson believed we cultivate our own character and through this cultivation become agents of
good or evil in the world. Cultivation of character is grounded in an unmediated experience of the
sacred that occurs by looking inward and through our relationship with the natural world. Finding
that spark of divinity within us and in natural surroundings, it is possible to have a direct,
transcendent experience of the holy. Emerson's belief became the cornerstone of the
Transcendentalist movement, and Emerson's greatest spiritual contribution to Unitarian
Universalism. After leaving his ministry, he and a small group of people known as the
Transcendental Club got together to discuss philosophy, religion, and literature. This group which
included figures such as Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Ellery Channing, and others, believed in the essential unity of all
creation, the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the
revelation of the deepest truths. They also stressed that all forms of being; God, nature, and
humanity, are spiritually united through a shared universal soul.
My first exposure to Emerson showed me how much I resonate with his theology: God dwells in
the world and the world dwells within God. How does this align with your theology? Perhaps for
atheists and agnostics it does not. Yet, if you change the word God to being or the one or oversoul, Emerson’s words for God, then maybe it does.
Where is spirit? Where is the divine? Where is God?
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Emerson’s theology was appealing to many 19th century Unitarians living in New England who
were yearning to rebel against the logic proposed by enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and
David Hume, the materialism and industrialism encouraged by the age of steam, and the traditional
Christian notion that God was found in the divinity of Christ, the church, the pulpit, and biblical
study. This resulted in philosophical, cultural and religious transformation of both Unitarian
thought and American life.
From a philosophical point of view, Transcendentalism saw the mind as a participatory agent
shaping our experience, replacing Locke's empiricist claim that there is nothing in the mind not first
put there through the senses. The Transcendentalist vision also went beyond Immanuel Kant by
insisting that the mind can comprehend spiritual truths directly without having to go through the
detour of the senses, and without the dictates of scripture, church authority, and institutions, and
without rationalism.
From a cultural standpoint Emerson reawakened the archetype of the hermit which had fallen from
grace due to the developments in science, industry, technology, and transportation. With public
literary figures like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman lifting up experiences in the natural world or
the practice of self-reflection as time worthy and transformative, the hermit was no longer seen as an
outcast suffering towards a tragic end. The sense of going inward and time in solitude reemerged as
a defining facet of the spiritual life in American culture.
From a religious perspective the transcendentalists redefined mysticism which was fraught with
notions of self-denial, misplaced sexuality, pious sacrifice, and the delusional feminine with
mysticism that educator, reformer and transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott defined as “a sacred
spark that has lighted the piety and illuminated the philosophy of all places and times.” Most
importantly transcendentalism expanded the divine beyond the confines of stone and wood, text and
creed, clergy and worship into the lived experiences of the people. Its leaders also were some of the
first Americans to study eastern religions.
Emerson and his followers were drawn to a transcendent God that dwelled on mountaintops, in
starry nights, and at the water’s edge. As was true for many philosophers, writers and poets of the
times, Emily Dickinson was liberated and inspired by Emerson’s transcendental theology. We can
see this in her poetry:
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church -I keep it, staying at Home -With a Bobolink for a Chorister -And an Orchard, for a Dome -Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice -I just wear my Wings -And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton -- sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman -And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at least -I'm going, all along.
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Although quirky, some of us can relate to her sentiment, that the holy is found in the wonder and
beauty of trees and birds and that God speaks to us through the natural world. This is why many of
us often choose to spend seasonably warm Sunday mornings at the seashore, in the forest, or in our
gardens instead of here at First Parish. We understand that communing with nature puts us in
intimate relationship with the holy, the mystery. This is exactly what the Transcendental Movement
of the mid 1800’s was attempting to promote both among Unitarians and the culture at large. Yet,
Unitarians were not easily persuaded. Their liberal Christianity took reason, tradition, and biblical
scholarship as its foundations, whereas Transcendentalism made personal spiritual experience and
individual conscience its guides. Perceiving the Unitarianism of the day as cold and dry, the
Transcendentalists desired a religion unmediated by priest or church, one that allowed for a personal
connection to the Divine.
Where is God? Where is spirit? Where is the divine?
As we can see transcendentalism was a rebellion against--the church, rational philosophy, and
industrial and scientific progress. There is one common link between these cultural norms of the
mid 1800’s: the abandonment of the individual. The church preaches conformity and strict
adherence to the word of God; rationalism negates our ability to create our own truth, and science
and technology abandon the spirit of life in favor of material wealth. One mission of the
Transcendentalists was to cultivate the self-reliant man and the power of individualism. This was all
well in good at a time when society was luring people outside of themselves. But individualism can
only take us so far.
It is evident that the followers of Transcendentalism felt a deep calling to live lives of personal
integrity and to bring about social change. Henry David Thoreau both practiced and wrote about
social responsibility. Theodore Parker was well known for his anti-slavery stance while Margaret
Fuller championed the rights of women and Bronson Alcott worked for the reform of education.
Two utopian communities, Brook Farm and Fruitlands, were founded by Transcendentalists as
models for all society. Yet, when we think of Emerson and his transcendental buddies we do not
first see them as social reformers, as people seeking justice. They were part of the Boston
intellectual scene, educated, well kept, and somewhat removed from the social issues of their times.
“Their transcendentalism was grounded in religious experience; it understood the cosmos as a
holistic unity; it taught a reverence for the natural world; and it affirmed the human capacity for
right action.” Many of us sitting here are in alignment with these tenets. Yet I have a sense that we
are searching for something more than an experience of the holy in a sunset or an understanding
that everything is connected. Many of us are searching for community, some of us need to love and
accept our selves more, and more of us are trying to figure out to do with the rest of our lives, and
some truly want to serve, make a difference, or leave the world in a better place. And when we
observe the world we do not always see orchards and oceans, we see hunger and hurricanes, we see
suffering and sorrow, and we see evil and emptiness. Transcendentalism does not directly address
these issues, perhaps because it never evolved into an actual religion, or because it lacked focus on
the community, or because it was blind to the homeless, the tortured, the starving.
Today we have the opportunity to be grateful and to celebrate the individualism, oneness, and
natural theology of transcendentalism yet we acknowledge that the world is in a difficult place. The
technology of the 21st century affords us awareness that the Transcendental Club did not have…the
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extent of suffering both in humanity and the earth herself. The spirit of life, God, the divine does
not solely exist in the beauty of the natural world and the interconnectedness of life, but lives in the
darkness, in the irreverent, in the fear and hopelessness of people. So as we lovers of nature,
proponents of transcendence, and seekers of unity live our lives, let us be conscious of the greater
world around us, a world that needs our attention, needs our care.
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