I notice a couple of recent and well reviewed ones at Amazon. One by Justin Kaplan and one, which looks a bit more challenging, by David Reynolds.

I’d welcome recommendations–or any guidance on how to get into Whitman.

Yes, my daughter was up quite early this morning. Very excited that Santa ater her cookies and drank her milk, and left a “Thank you” note. Even more excited about her roller skates! (There’s a fun santa story behind that.)

Merry Christmas to those that celebrate.

Allison–At the Unitarian Christmas Eve service we attended last night, the minister made the point that meaning of Christmas starts before (though definitely includes) the birth of Jesus. She also incorporated Chanuka in a way that makes it more than a story of triumphant “rightuous” in warfare. (Even if your 8 y.o. was still awake as you wrote your message at 10:56 last night, I bet she has already been up for a while as I type mine on this bright, crisp Christmas morning in N.H.

Thanks for the Asia, reminder. I was intrigued to see that the Transcendentalists were inspired, at least partly, by Vedic thought. More reading to do….

(as I sit here waiting for my 8 y.o. daughter to fall asleep so that the magic of Santa can arrive in our house, where we celebrate Christmas as a time to appreciate each other for the light we bring into a world that can, at times, seem so dark.)

I cite this because it reinforces one of the points I tried to make in the interview, that Transcendentalism has come down to us in diluted, caricatured form. Mailer no doubt saw hiself in the Emersonian tradition; yet, as Morrow points out, there is so much more to RWE than what debased popular culture has made of him.

By the way, I do not know the origin of the name of Emerson’s home (“Bush”), but I remind readers that he affectionately called his second wife “Asia,” from his interest in and respect for the wisdom of that continent.

Beyond that, I think that in the pursuit of truth and a connection to the higher self, one hears a calling along the way. One does not have to claim enlightenment or transcendence. One only has to act upon the truth heard from the heart.

So, my question for Professor Gura (whose book is now on its way to me), Chris, and others is: What do the Transcendentalists have to say about fomenting openness and contemplation? To mangle the words of Richard Rorty, can’t it be said that if we take care of wisdom, self-governance will take care of itself? How can we channel the Concord gang (and, yes, the others too) to promote robust self-governance?

He tells us that “a great man is always willing to be little.”

So I strive to be little when I contemplate spirituality.

“Nature looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has a cause like all the rest; and when once I comprehend that, will these fields stretch so immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually considerable? Permanence is a word of degrees. Every thing is medial. Moons are no more bounds to spiritual power than bat-balls.”

Merry Christmas and I hope you find some bat-balls in your stocking.

For the sake of this conversation though, I’d like to push back and make the case that Emerson was as passionate in his pursuit for social justice as he was for individualism. My contention is that he did not see the two as mutually exclusive. In fact, he says as much with these words that ring like recurrent church bells in my head:

“The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Professor Gura writes:

The point is that once the self is discovered, one has an obligation to those other myriad comparable selves to help them achieve, first the same enlightenment, and then the commitment to social justice.

But I ask you, who is this person so wise as to register the actual point of discovered self. Can they be humble? I believe Emerson viewed the struggle for self as a permanent ground zero – the good being only a ripple effect from this beautiful struggle.

I do not believe that social justice can be ministered – only embodied.

Professor Gura writes that the enlightened have an “obligation” to pursue social justice, RWE takes up that idea:

“Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.”

I’ve often contemplated the preceding passage and I’m only now coming to appreciate it. Emerson seems to stress that much of what we call social justice is actually self-flagellation or even self-aggrandizement.

“Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade.”

“Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live.”

It’s like a lame duck coach (who feels guilty) giving a impassioned motivational speech to the team he will soon be leaving – the team knows the words ring hollow. The speech serves only the speaker.

But I ask you, what if we were to deem our selves enlightened and thus set our sights on social justice…how would we know the right path? Because as Emerson writes:

“One man’s justice is another’s injustice”

If we take our eye off the ball (the self) and we spend our precious time focusing on “social justice” – we will for the most part swing and miss, because:

“Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues.”

“But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.”

And I think it is essential to read them in the context of their times before extrapolating them to our own. For example, for many of these people, blacks were inferior; abolition might not have represented social justice in the way we would assume.

Anyway, underlying much of the Transcendental enterprise seems to be a search for connection: with God (as they understand God), with Nature (the same thing as God for some of them?), with each other (lots and lots of talk) and, with the “world.” It seems a bit ironic to seek these connections through transcendence–rising beyond something. In this perspective the social concerns could be seen as representing a closing of a loop; having gotten beyond a reliance on material reality, they turn their attention back to altering it through social engagement.

The more I learn about them I find that it is hard to generalize about the Transcendentalists. They are a fascinating, complex group of human beings.

It makes so much sense that working for social justice would be the natural outcome of searching for truth. And when we think of those who have graced the planet and left the most positive “spiritual” imprint they have all put their energies into social justice.

Off to read….

Both Professor Gura and Emerson (as quoted by Potter) use the word:

Gura: “Already at that moment many of his friends–leaders in the Transcendentalist movement– were working indefatigably for a better world, out in the world.”

Emerson: “The way to mend the bad world, is to create the right world.”

The “world” is certainly different for Sophia Peabody than it is for Margaret Fuller. And for Bronson Alcott than for Theodore Parker.

Didn’t Thoreau say something like, “I would rather be a good neighbor than a good citizen.”

It would seem to me that this is more complex–and more interesting– than a simple dichotomy between “individualism” and “association.”

We have our assignment, kids. The theme of the short winter course is: “It wasn’t all Emerson…” And the new giants we need to get to know are fellow-Transcendentalists Orestes Brownson (1803 – 1876), Theodore Parker (1810 – 1860), and George Ripley, (1802 – 1880). Here’s a first stab at on-line introductions:

Orestes Brownson‘s book on The Laboring Classes was described in Arthur M. Schlesinger’s first work of historical biography as “the best study of the workings of society written by an American before the Civil War.” When Schlesinger rediscovered and reintroduced Brownson to American readers in the late Depression, Henry Steele Commager began his New York Times review thus:

If Orestes Brownson is remembered at all today, it is as a convert who attempted unsuccessfully to liberalize and Americanize the Catholic Church. Al the rest of that long and colorful career is forgotten, and readers who come across that amusing passage in the “Fable for Critics” have difficulty in identifying the victim. The twenty formidable volumes of his works gather dust on those shelves which they still burden; the biographical monument, raised by pious hands, is justly regarded as a curiosity. Yet in his day Orestes Brownson was respected and feared as were few of his contemporaries; European philo0sophers regarded him with hope; American politicians enlisted his vitriolic pen; denominations competed for his eloquence; and when he listed himself among the three most profound men in America there were those who took him seriously…

Henry Steele Commager, “That Sturdy but Erratic Reformer, Orestes Brownson,” in the New York Times, April 23, 1939

Theodore Parker was a Boston preacher of the Christian church’s social mission. He was a sometime Unitarian and among the most eloquent of Abolitionists. Parker’s version of what became the climax of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was: “of all the people, by all the people, for all the people.” And it was Parker’s line on the inevitable success of the abolitionist movement that Martin Luther King Jr. often quoted in the civil rights movement: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Theodore Parker was our Savonarola, an excellent scholar, in frank and affectionate communication with the best minds of his day, yet the tribune of the people, and the stout Reformer to urge and defend every cause of humanity with and for the humblest of mankind. He was no artist. Highly refined persons might easily miss in him the element of beauty. What he said was mere fact, almost offended you, so bald and detached; little cared he. He stood altogether for practical truth; and so to the last. He used every day and hour of his short life, and his character appeared in the last moments with the same firm control as in the midday of strength. I habitually apply to him the words of French philosopher who speaks of “the man of Nature who abominates the steam engine and the factory. His vast lungs breath independence with the air of the mountains and the woods.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted on the excellent Theodore Parker Web Site which links to all the essential references on Parker’s life and works.

George Ripley was an “Associationist” (capital A) as Emerson was famously an individualist. It was Ripley, with his wife Sophia Dana Ripley and a stalwart community, who in 1841 founded the Brook Farm community in what is now West Roxbury in Boston. The settlement and the social movement were transformed into legend by a fire in 1847. Ripley became a successful journalist — a writer on Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune and an editor of Harper’s Magazine.

In the mornings everyone in the community would wake at approximately 6:00 am, eat breakfast, and then work for ten hours in the summer or eight hours in the winter. Even so, enjoyment was the first pursuit of Brook Farm. After the work was done and after dinner had been served, there was plenty of time for personal enjoyment and leisure. The members of Brook Farm had an insatiable desire for pleasure: music, dancing, cardplaying, charades, tableaux vivants, dramatic readings, plays, costume parties, picnics, sledding and skating. Even in stormy weather, impromptu discussions were started in the Hive. Literary societies and reading clubs were very popular at Brook Farm, as were the readings and performances of Shakespeare’s plays. Musical visitors were common, and some members also sang. Anti-slavery gatherings in Boston and Dedham were attended by many members. But perhaps the most important and symbolizing custom at the Farm was “The symbol of Universal Unity.” This ritual was performed by the entire company rising and joining hands in a circle and then “vowing truth to the cause of God and Humanity.”

From Jessica Gordon’s history of Brook Farm on the American Transcendentalism Web.

“Each must be armed- not necessarily with musket and pike. Happy, if, seeing these, he can feel that he has better muskets and pikes in his energy and constancy. To every creature is his own weapon. However skilfully [sic] concealed from himself, a good while. His work is sword and shield. let him accuse none, let him injure none The way to mend the bad world, is to create the right world.”

further down underlined:

” I look on that man as happy, who, when there is a question of success, looks into his work for a reply, not into the market, not into opinion, not into patronage.”

and of course I could go on because the next and the next is also so apt.

As I stressed in the interview, we need to get beyond the notion that Transcendentalism equals individualism. The point is that once the self is discovered, one has an obligation to those other myriad comparable selves to help them achieve, first, the same enlightenment, and then the commitment to social justice. When in “The Transcendentalist” RWE speaks of the group as withdrawn from the world, working alone in their studies, he fudges the issue. Already at that moment many of his friends–leaders in the Transcendentalist movement– were working indefatigably for a better world, out in the world. That is the ethic that Ripley and Brownson and Parker bequeath us.

Zeke & Potter both mentioned the Society of Friends. I’m not a member; however, a book that I frequently read (and recommend), Let Your Life Speak, is by Parker Palmer who is a member of the Society of Friends, and at one time was the Dean of Studies at Pendle Hill, one of their retreat centers. Here’s an excerpt from Let Your Life Speak:

“Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks — we will also find our path of authentic service in the world. True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”
Buechner’s definition starts with the self and moves toward the needs of the world: it begins, wisely, where vocation begins — not in what the world needs (which is everything), but in the nature of the human self…”

Sounds like Emerson to me!

Zeke said: “Leaving aside doctrinal disputes (which are trivial and boring) might it be argued that there are two fundamentally different approaches to “religion?” One offering answers and the other offering questions?”

I found this passage by Palmer this morning:

“Authentic spirituality wants to open us to truth – whatever truth may be, wherever truth may take us. Such a spirituality does not dictate where we must go, but trusts that any path walked with integrity will take us to a place of knowledge. Such a spirituality encourages us to welcome diversity and conflict, to tolerate ambiguity, and to embrace paradox. By this understanding, the spirituality of education is not about dictating ends. It is about examining and clarifying the inner sources of teaching and learning, ridding us of the toxins that poison our hearts and minds.”

and here’s an excerpt from Rumi’s poem Moses and the Shepherd:

Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.

Hindus do Hindu things.
the Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.
It’s all praise, and it’s all right.
It’s not me that’s glorified in acts of worship.
It’s the worshipers! I don’t hear the words
they say. I look inside at the humility.

That broken-open lowliness is the reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning, burning.

Be friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression!

Moses,
those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.

Lovers who burn
are another.

mynocturama, I’m mulling over what you said above.

Like the first generation of transcendentalists, many here seem to have been stifled by the first approach and liberated by setting out on various voyages towards Truth, to use Emerson’s metaphor.

Most affirming of all, may be the discovery that Truth is itself an interrogatory process without end. As William Ellery Channing said: “the idea of God, sublime and awful as it is, is the idea of our own spiritual nature, purified and enlarged to infinity.” (Quoted by Elizabeth Peabody in her Reminiscences of W.E.C.)

In other words, the questions and the quest are themselves could be the Divine.

-Robert Nesta Marley

….Everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of the philosopher; and this for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth itself, yet it characterizes the people……

……Here is the great fact of Conservatism, entrenched in its immense redoubts, with Himmaleh for its front, and Atlas for its flank and Andes for its rear, and the Atlantic and Pacific seas for its ditches and trenches, which has planted its crosses, and crescents, and stars and stripes, and various signs and badges of possession, over every rood of the planet, and says, ‘I will hold fast; and to whom I will, will I give, and whom I will, will I exclude and starve:’ so says Conservatism; and all the children of men attack the colossus in their youth, and all, or all but a few, bow before it when they are old. A necessity not yet commanded, a negative imposed on the will of many by his condition, a deficiency in his force, is the foundation on which it rests. Let this side be fairly stated. Meantime, on the other part, arises Reform, and offers the sentiment of Love as an overmatch to this material might. I wish to consider well this affirmative side, which has a loftier port and reason than heretofore, which encroaches on the other every day, puts it out of countenance, out of reason and out of temper, and leaves it nothing but silence and possession.”

In the (let’s call it) previous incarnation of ROS, two loci of especially intense activity were the threads generally as they lead into soon-to-be airing shows, and the pitch a show thread specifically. So, to start with, a simple suggestion would be to coalesce these two aspects together, to have what would essentially be various ongoing discussion threads, of whatever degree of generality/specificity, from which possible future shows would simply naturally bubble-up. It most likely wouldn’t work quite this easily, at least at first, but I do think the online dialogue-discussion-community needs to be its own thing, to have its own priority and autonomy, its own life. And the intimate connection to the podcast/audio content would by its nature make the site something more than just an online forum. And as far as generating new thread headings, starting new topics and branches and so on, I think the Emerson summer reading group showed that, if there’s an email liaison who’s relatively on the ball, new thread requests and the acceptance thereof could work pretty smoothly. And having to make the case for a new discussion heading, still keeping actual control of the thread architecture in the hands of Mary and Chris and whoever else at ROS, would keep the threads and branches from proliferating into a sprawling mess.

I know this is pretty broad still, but I do think we should speak up and offer active input into this site. I remember, when the threads really got chugging, ROS had to be one of the most exciting and stimulating and intimately discursive places to be on the web. And I wasn’t even one of the more consistent posters, and still the engagement and involvement left a mark on me. It was a genuinely special place to be. And that quality and feeling need to be more than just recaptured, but taken up into something alive and new.

OK, sorry to go off thread topic like this, but I thought this was as good a place as any to let loose some of my thoughts.

On that Romney speech. Did I miss the outrage over the way the message was 180 degrees from the Kennedy message?

is it a lost cause to attempt a public dialog about the distinction between faith and religion? I have faith so, I don’t need religion?

On the UU suggestions: this is definitely a YMMV topic. (that is, Your Mileage May Vary) There is a UU church in Jamaica Plain and I was very excited to check it out. The minister was talking out Christ being the The One and Only. He lost me on that one. Come on, there have been other enlightened souls who have graced the planet…

I also have a logistical challenge: I host a Sunday morning circle for my knitting community. While it is not the place for my philosophical/spiritual/intellectual explorations in an intellectual kind of way, we do refer to it as “Knitting Church” and the community is vital to my life. So, I need another time for this pursuit. (What can I say, I’m difficult.)

Also not a church, but a meditation/yoga group- the right one for you. Out here we have the Barre Center for Insight Meditation and for Buddhist Studies.I think there is one in Cambridge. I don’t consider Buddhism a religion ( not the American version anyway). I keep assuring myself that I can run there for spiritual help should I get desperate.

If you are turned off by the dogma you don’t belong. It’s not for you. There are a lot of people who feel as you do and they find each other and then transcend.

I left early the orthodox Judaism that was being imposed on me as I felt choked by it. Through an odyssey I found a community in Roxbury of like minded “drop-outs” in awe of Emerson, Thoreau, Goya, Rembrandt ( don’t wince at the mix- I am just grabbing a few) and making music, writing,writing poetry, also reacting against the politics of the day ( Viet Nam). Didn’t stay there but that experience changed my life. There is nothing like having a group of people around you that you can care about and who, in turn, embrace you, mind body and spirit. That is true family. But it’s difficult to find and I believe it’s hard to make such a thing last long. ( I think they call this “intentional community” ) This particular community is still in existence, very successful, with several branches, having grown another generation. I would definitley call them transcendental. I am not there- long story. But I would or might be.

Megan Marshall: “And so, at thirteen (my emphasis) Elizabeth proceeded to read the New Testament through thirty times (my emphasis) in three months, each time in reference to a different disputed point of doctrine.”

I wonder if Allison has looked into contemporaray Unitarian Universalist churches or, more familiar to me, the Society of Friends.

By the way, I, too, was delighted to see your byline above Allison!

What you said above reminded me of what Jodi Foster’s character said at the end of the movie Contact:

“I… had an experience… I can’t prove it, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever… A vision of the universe, that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how… rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are *not*, that none of us are alone! I wish… I… could share that… I wish, that everybody, if only for one… moment, could feel… that awe, and humility, and hope. But… That continues to be my wish.”

You also asked: “Where do you find a congregation of transcendentalists?”

I can’t say the following are necessarily ‘congregations of transcendentalists’ but these are two places where I personally find people whose interest is to serve humanity.

1. Center for Nonviolent Communication: “A global organization helping people connect compassionately with themselves and one another through Nonviolent Communication” I found an interview with the founder, Marshall Rosenberg, on YouTube.

2. Aikido (Though it’s a marshal art, the core principles are peace and reconciliation, i.e. you’re objective is to protect both yourself and your attacker.)

Zeke, I just read the reviews of The Peabody Sisters. It looks good. Thanks for bring it to my/our attention.

Nother, one definition of being humble I’ve always liked is: a humble man does not have a low opinion of himself; he has no opinion of himself.

Potter, regarding what you said: “What bothers me most about how off track of our founding ideals we have gotten is the lack of tolerance. Without tolerance we cannot come together.”

I head this story on NPR the other day:
Finding Redemption Through Acceptance

and also saw Daniel Goleman give this lecture on TED: Why aren’t we all Good Samaritans?

(You mentioned Joseph Campbell. I could watch the Bill Moyers’ interview with him over and over. Great stuff!)