the doubter and the doubt...

Ralph Waldo's "Brahma"...

"Brahma

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. "

Blessings

the owner of the sphere...

School starts today for our three children (Grades 8, 6, and 4-sounds amazingly well planned doesn't it?)  During my years as a middle and high school history teacher, Emerson's great essay "History" pointed the way.  Blessings to all students who are being "admitted to the right of reason" this back-to-school season.

"There is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all:
And where it cometh, all things are;
And it cometh everywhere.

I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind, is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent."

Blessings

a becoming creator...

This weekend was for me a true celebration of independence (and the deeper reality of unity found in true independence.)  My wonderful and tolerant family takes me to Concord each year on my birthday (July 3) and, as always, we visit Emerson's Study at the museum first.  This year that was followed by Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and Author's Ridge where we communed with the spirits of Ralph Waldo, Henry David, and Amos Bronson (and families.)  Then a picnic lunch at the Old North Bridge and finally a canoe trip on the Sudbury.
   This morning I re-read, for the first time in years, Emerson's "American Scholar."  As I have gotten older I have tended towards the later essays and reading "Scholar" was a shock to my system-which is, of course, the point.  An excerpt:

 "To the young mind, every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things, and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground, whereby contrary and remote things cohere, and flower out from one stem. It presently learns, that, since the dawn of history, there has been a constant accumulation and classifying of facts. But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary motion. The chemist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout matter; and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts. The ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact; one after another, reduces all strange constitutions, all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on for ever to animate the last fibre of organization, the outskirts of nature, by insight.

Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome of day, is suggested, that he and it proceed from one root; one is leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that Root? Is not that the soul of his soul? -- A thought too bold, -- a dream too wild. Yet when this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of more earthly natures, -- when he has learned to worship the soul, and to see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only the first gropings of its gigantic hand, he shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator."

Blessings
(photo: at Emerson's grave)

we are as we pray...

John Emery Abbot and Ralph Waldo Emerson could be said to represent the theological extremes of "Boston Unitarianism."  Yet both knew that we are as we pray... Emerson's Poem, "Prayer"

"When success exalts thy lot
God for thy virtue lays a plot.
And all thy life is for thy own,
Then for mankind's instruction shown;
And though thy knees were never bent,
To Heaven thy hourly prayers are sent,
And whether formed for good or ill
Are registered and answered still."

Blessings

stretched in smiling repose...

This in response to the UU Salon May question. Emerson on the soul (from "Spiritual Laws")  This central idea is so compelling to me but requires much faith...

"The soul will not know either deformity or pain. If, in the hours of clear reason, we should speak the severest truth, we should say, that we had never made a sacrifice. In these hours the mind seems so great, that nothing can be taken from us that seems much. All loss, all pain, is particular; the universe remains to the heart unhurt. Neither vexations nor calamities abate our trust. No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. Allow for exaggeration in the most patient and sorely ridden hack that ever was driven. For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose."

Blessings

original relations...

"Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?...The sun shines to-day also. "  Ralph Waldo Emerson

a king in disguise...

It is a cold, rainy, and somewhat dreary spring morning in New England  and I for one could use a little encouragement from Ralph Waldo.  This from the introductory lecture of his 1841 Boston Lecture series, "The Times." 

"The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of to-day is building up the Future. The Times -- the nations, manners, institutions, opinions, votes, are to be studied as omens, as sacred leaves, whereon a weighty sense is inscribed, if we have the wit and the love to search it out...

We are the representatives of religion and intellect, and stand in the light of Ideas, whose rays stream through us to those younger and more in the dark. What further relations we sustain, what new lodges we are entering, is now unknown. To-day is a king in disguise. To-day always looks mean to the thoughtless, in the face of an uniform experience, that all good and great and happy actions are made up precisely of these blank to-days. Let us not be so deceived. Let us unmask the king as he passes. Let us not inhabit times of wonderful and various promise without divining their tendency."

Have a great day and
Blessings
(Painting is "Rain Storm Union Square" by Frederick Childe Hassam)

CIA

Ralph Waldo was a carrier for the Central Intelligence Agency-this communique from the essay "Success:"

"Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that, if you are here, the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful...

Is there no loving of knowledge, and of art, and of our design, for itself alone ? Cannot we please ourselves with performing our work, or gaining truth and power, without being praised for it ? I gain my point, I gain all points, if I can reach my companion with any statement which teaches him his own worth. The sum of wisdom is, that the time is never lost that is devoted to work...

...it is sanity to know, that, over my talent or knack, and a million times better than any talent, is the central intelligence which subordinates and uses all talents; and it is only as a door into this, that any talent or the knowledge it gives is of value. He only who comes into this central intelligence, in which no egotism or exaggeration can be, comes into self-possession."

Blessings

fill the hour...

For another Lenten season, Boston Unitarian (transcendentalist,) take on repentance, here is Ralph Waldo:

“To fill the hour, that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval”

I would like to do that...Blessings

awe, and love, and insatiable curiosity...

This from Ralph Waldo Emerson In his later lecture on "Character" (not to be confused with the essay by that name in "Essays:  Second Series:

"There is a fear that pure truth, pure morals, will not make a religion for the affections. When-ever the sublimities of character shall be incarnated in a many, we may rely that awe and love and insatiable curiosity will follow his steps. Character is the habit of action from the permanent vision of truth. It carries a superiority to all the accidents of life. It compels right relation to every other man, - domesticates itself with strangers and enemies."...

It confers perpetual insight. It sees that a man's friends and his foes are of his own house-hold, of his own person. What would it avail me, if I could destroy my enemies? There would be as many to-morrow. That which I hate and fear is really in myself, and no knife is long enough to reach to its heart...

There is no end to the sufficiency of character. It can afford to wait ; it can do without what is called success ; it cannot but succeed. To a well-principled man existence is victory. He defends himself against failure in his main design by making every inch of the road to it pleasant. There is no trifle, and no obscurity to him : he feels the immensity of the chain whose last link he holds in his hand, and is led by it. Having nothing, this spirit bath all."

Blessings

the core of our civilization...

In Emerson's lecture, "Character" (not to be confused with the essay by the same name in "Essay: Second Series," the "trappings of orthodox religion don't come out too well.  The importance of the Sabbath, however, does a little better:

"Religion is as inexpugnable as the use of lamps, or of wells, or of chimneys. We must have days and temples and teachers. The Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence. It invites to the noblest solitude and the noblest society, to whatever means and aids of spiritual refreshment. Men may well come together to kindle each other to virtuous living. Confucius said, " If in the morning I hear of the right way, and in the evening die, I can be happy."

Have a blessed Sabbath

guarded lips...

This from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Superlative"...

"There is a superlative temperament which has no medium range, but swiftly oscillates from the freezing to the boiling point, and which affects the manners of those who share it with a certain desperation. Their aspect is grimace. They go tearing, convulsed through life, - wailing, praying, exclaiming, swearing. We talk, sometimes, with people whose conversation would lead you to suppose that they had lived in a museum, where all the objects were monsters and extremes...they use the superlative of grammar : " most perfect," " most exquisite," " most horrible."... they are enchanted, they are desolate, because you have got or have not got a shoe-string or a wafer you happen to want, - not perceiving that superlatives are diminutives, and weaken ; that the positive is the sinew of speech, the superlative the fat. If the talker lose a tooth, he thinks the universal thaw and dissolution of things has come. Controvert his opinion and he cries "Persecution! " and reckons himself with Saint Barnabas, who was sawn in two...

How impatient we are, in these northern latitudes, of looseness and intemperance in speech! Our measure of success is the moderation and low level of an individual's judgment. Doctor Channing's piety and wisdom had such weight that, in Boston, the popular idea of religion was whatever this eminent divine held. But I remember that his best friend, a man of guarded lips, speaking of him in a circle of his admirers, said : I have known him long, I have studied his character, and I believe him capable of virtue."

Blessings

coffee and prayer...

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who liked his two cups of coffee in the morning with his pie, wrote in his journal  "Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer."  Though coffee doesn't come out too well in this quote (talent was not particularly a great virtue for Emerson,) most days I feel I need both just to rise to the level of mediocrity! 

Blessings

stupendous...

And the snow continues...the driveway will need yet another shovelling in a few minutes so I console myself with another beautiful photograph (taken by daughter Molly-see here for more,) and a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson from his "Demonology"...

"One moment of a...life is a fact so stupendous as to take the lustre out of all fiction."

Have a blessed Sabbath everyone.

elemental forces...

Its a rainy New England morning and the wind is howling.  Most of my wonderful family live in the Midwest and a "Christmas Blizzard" prevented travel this year, postponing the annual gathering of brothers and sisters and cousins at my parents house.  The weather is, of course, an "elemental force" that cannot be tampered with, only bent to...    This from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Perpetual Forces."

"What I have said of the inexorable persistence of every elemental force to remain itself, the impossibility of tampering with it or warping it, - the same rule applies again strictly to this force of intellect ; that it is perception, a seeing, not making, thoughts. The man must bend to the law, never the law to him...

For man, the receiver of all, and depositary of these volumes of power, I am to say that his ability and performance are according to his reception of these various streams of force. We define Genius to be a sensibility to all the impressions of the outer world, a sensibility so equal that it receives accurately all impressions, and can truly report them, without excess or loss, as it received. It must not only receive all, but it must render all. And the health of man is an equality of inlet and outlet, gathering and giving. Any hoarding is tumor and disease...

I delight in tracing these wonderful powers, the electricity and gravity of the human world. The power of persistence, of enduring defeat and of gaining victory by defeats, is one of these forces which never loses its charm...

We arrive at virtue by taking its direction instead of imposing ours."

(Thanks to sister-in-law Stacy for the photo of the water tower in the town where she, my brother, and their two children live) 

Blessings

the loyal soul...

Transcendentalism's detractors have, from its beginning, criticized it for its seeming egotism. Unfortunately many of its adherents have embraced it for the same reason. Emerson sets the record straight in this excerpt from "Immortality:"

"It is a proverb of the world that good will makes intelligence, that goodness itself is an eye ; and the one doctrine in which all religions agree is that new light is added to the mind in proportion as it uses that which it has. "He that doeth the will of God abideth forever." Ignorant people confound reverence for the intuitions with egotism. There is no confusion in the things themselves. The health of the mind consists in the perception of law. Its dignity consists in being under the law. Its goodness is the most generous extension of our private interests to the dignity and generosity of ideas. Nothing seems to me so excellent as a belief in the laws. It communicates nobleness, and, as it were, an asylum in temples to the loyal soul."

Blessings

a loose screw...

Father Taylor, Methodist minister to the sailors at Seaman's Bethel Chapel in Boston and model for Melville's Father Mapple loved Emerson but had little good to say about his philosophy. Emerson, for his part, deeply admired Taylor. "what splendor, what sweetness, what richness, what depth, what cheer!"
Of transcendentalism, Taylor, after hearing some discourse (not by Emerson) or other said, "It would take as many sermons like that to convert a human soul as it would quarts of skimmed milk to make a man drunk."
And yet he loved Emerson, saying of him, "Mr Emerson is one of the sweetest creatures God ever made; there is a screw loose somewhere in the machinery, yet I cannot tell where it is, for I never heard it jar. He must go to heaven when he dies, for if he went to hell the devil would not know what to do with him."

Blessings

what is pie for?...

When I was very young, in elementary school, I loved football and as we lived in South Dakota, the nearest team, our "home team" was the Minnesota Vikings. I loved their quarterback at the time, Fran Tarkenton and remember reading in an interview that his favorite food was chili. For some time after that, on the rare occasions that we ate out, I ordered only chili.
Some years ago, I read that Ralph Waldo Emerson ate apple pie for breakfast so (in the spirit of youthful imitation) I gave it a try. Well...I really love apple pie for breakfast. The problem is that I don't much love most of the apple pies made in the stores, I am too cheap to buy good bakery pies, and though I make many of our family's meals, for some reason my attempts at apple pie have not been pretty.
Fortunately my wonderful wife (who is a successful college textbook editor) makes a splendid apple pie (not too sweet and with the apple peels left on) so every now and again I am lucky enough to indulge myself with an Emersonian pie...
Here are two stories of Emerson and pie related by Oliver Wendell Holmes in his biography "Ralph Waldo Emerson:"

"At breakfast we had, among other things, pie. This article at breakfast was one of Mr. Emerson's weaknesses. A pie stood before him now. He offered to help somebody from it, who declined; and then one or two others, who also declined; and then Mr_____________. ; he too declined. ' But Mr.____________. ! ' Mr. Emerson remonstrated, with humorous emphasis, thrusting the knife under a piece of the pie, and putting the entire weight of his character into his manner, — ' but Mr____________. , what is pie for ?'"

and:

"A near friend of mine, a lady, was once in the cars with Emerson, and when they stopped for the refreshment of the passengers he was very desirous of procuring something at the station for her solace. Presently he advanced upon her with a cup of tea in one hand and a wedge of pie in the other, — such a wedge ! She could hardly have been more dismayed if one of Caesar's cunei, or wedges of soldiers, had made a charge against her.
Yet let me say here that pie, often foolishly abused, is a good creature, at the right time and in angles of thirty or forty degrees. In semicircles and quadrants it may sometimes prove too much for delicate stomachs. But here was Emerson, a hopelessly confirmed pie-eater, never, so far as I remember, complaining of dyspepsia; and there, on the other side, was Carlyle, feeding largely on wholesome oatmeal, groaning with indigestion all his days, and living with half his self-consciousness habitually centred beneath his diaphragm."

Blessings

the oldest religion

Ralph Waldo on mind and the endless river from "Natural History of the Intellect."

"In my thought I seem to stand on the bank of a river and watch the endless flow of the stream, floating objects of all shapes, colors and natures; nor can I much detain them as they pass, except by running beside them a little way along the bank. But whence they come or whither they go is not told me. Only I have a suspicion that, as geologists say every river makes its own valley, so does this mystic stream. It makes its valley, makes its banks and makes perhaps the observer too. Who has found the boundaries of human intelligence? Who has made a chart of its channel or approached the fountain of this wonderful Nile ?


I am of the oldest religion. Leaving aside the question which was prior, egg or bird, I believe the mind is the creator of the world, and is ever creating ; - that at last Matter is dead Mind ; that mind makes the senses it sees with ; that the genius of man is a continuation of the power that made him and that has not done making him."

Blessings
(Note: Riverbank painting by Maxfield Parrish)

sipping only what is sweet...

Many thanks to those who commented on yesterday's post. I don't very often venture into criticism believing that positive expression will always do more good than confrontation.
In that vein, James Freeman Clarke compares Emerson's influence (just after his death) to Theodore Parker in this excerpt from his "19th Century Questions.

"If the movements of thought are now much more independent and spontaneous; if to-day traditions have lost their despotic power; if even those who hold an orthodox creed are able to treat it as a dead letter, respectable for its past uses, but by no means binding on us now, this is largely owing to the manly position taken by Emerson. And yet, let it be observed, this influence was not exercised by attacking old opinions, by argument, by denial, by criticism. Theodore Parker did all this, but his influence on thought has been far less than that of Emerson. Parker was a hero who snuffed the battle afar off, and flung himself, sword in hand, into the thick of the conflict. But, much as we love and reverence his honesty, his immense activity, his devotion to truth and right, we must admit to-day, standing by these two friendly graves, that the power of Emerson to soften the rigidity of time-hardened belief was far the greater. It is the old fable of the storm and sun. The violent attacks of the tempest only made the traveler cling more closely to his cloak ; the genial heat of the sun compelled him to throw it aside. In all Emerson's writings there is scarcely any argument. He attacks no man's belief; he simply states his own. His method is always positive, constructive. He opens the windows- and lets in more light. He is no man's opponent; the enemy of no one. He states what he sees, and that which he does not see he passes by. He was often attacked, but never replied. His answer was to go forward, and say something else. He did not care for what he called the " bugbear consistency." If to-day he said what seemed like Pantheism, and to-morrow he saw some truth which seemed to reveal a divine personality, a supreme will, he uttered the last, as he had declared the first, always faithful to the light within. He left it to the spirit of truth to reconcile such apparent contradictions. He was like his own humble-bee —

" Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet;
Thou dost mock at fate and care,
Leave the chaff and take the wheat."

Blessings