The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

UUCS Sermons
Sermon by Kate Lore

Last week I spoke about agnosticism and the key roles that doubt and reason play in this belief system.  I then lifted up President Bush’s convictions about the Iraq war as an example of the type of evil that can be done when doubt is seen as a sign of weakness or lack of resolve.  I ended with the suggestion that we don’t have to have all the answers in order to live our deep questions into being.

Well, today I was going to speak about something that may seem at first to be the polar opposite of agnosticism but which is not. And I am going to lift up a leader who is quite different from President Bush:  Ralph Waldo Emerson--a UU hero who dramatically altered our understanding of how truth is revealed.   I will also share a part of my inner spiritual life—my mysticism—with the hope that we now know each other well enough for me to safely reveal this part of myself.  As always, we will have time at the end of the sermon for you to share your comments, questions, opinions and—of course—your doubts!

Here goes . . . .

I was 10 years old when I began having mystical experiences.  By mystical experience I mean those magical times when one finds oneself in the presence of something palpably sacred which unequivocally affirms our deep interconnectedness, our Oneness.  Although these mystical experiences have happened in a variety of settings, a good number of them have happened when I am out alone in nature.

 I should tell you that I grew up in a remarkably beautiful area: Pacific Grove , California .  This small coastal town, is home to some of the richest sea life found on this planet.  It is also home to a regular colony of monarch butterflies, which over-winter there each year in a forest just six blocks from where I grew up.

As a child of a single, working parent, I had plenty of time in which to roam unsupervised.  I chose to spend a lot of that time out-of-doors, exploring the tide pools or playing in the forests.  So, like Emerson, I have always loved nature. 

Also like Emerson, I find that there are some times when the Sacred aspect of nature becomes intensified and tangible.

For example, I’ll never forget the day about 10 years ago when I was sitting out on a rock while the surf lapped around me.  While I sat there, lost in thought, I suddenly became aware of an immense yet very delicate rainbow-colored web all around me.  It started with a single strand of what appeared to be some sort of spider web that was very firmly attached to the palm of my hand.  I examined this strand from every direction, trying to make sense of it.  Surely it had to be from one of those spiders that casts her eggs on the wind.  I had read about those spiders in a book and it would provide a logical explanation.  So I looked around, searching for the rest of the egg case.  Strangely, I couldn’t find it.

So I searched the vicinity around me for any nearby trees, shrubs, houses --anything from which a spider might launch itself.  Nothing.  My befuddlement grew to intrigue when I suddenly saw a much larger web coming into focus.  As my gaze wandered I could suddenly see countless strands of this spider webby stuff and they were connected to everything around me: the ocean and rocks, the sea otter out on that wave—everything.   It was both beautiful and spooky, as I wondered how to make sense of the experience.

Then the web suddenly faded from my view.  It was as if someone was slowly hitting a cosmic dimmer switch and I was sad to see it go.  The spiritual part of me sensed that I had just been given some sort of gift from the universe and I wanted just a little more time in its presence to make meaning from it all.  The scientific part of me also wanted it to stay so I could conduct empirical tests on the web strands.  I wanted to be able to document their existence and garner any insights they might offer into the workings of the universe. 

But it didn’t stay.  In fact, I’ve never seen the web since that day 10 years ago, but I think back on it fondly--even though I’m still a bit puzzled by the experience.  And because I witnessed it in an unaltered state (i.e., clean and sober), I perceive its existence as “truth” even though I can’t rationally explain it.  Rather, I choose to interpret the experience as some sort of mystical expression of our 7^th principle: the interconnected web of all existence, of which we are a part. 

I want to acknowledge that my interpretation of my experience may sound “doubtful” to some of you, and that is fine with me -- really!  Because I am a UU, I can rest in the belief that there is no truth with a capital “T”.  Thus, I don’t have to worry about convincing you.  I can simply ask that you hear of my experience with an open mind. 

 I may be fooling myself, but I like to imagine that if Ralph Waldo Emerson were alive today and sitting here among us, he would be giving me a knowing nod right about now, confirming my understanding of the significance of my day with the web.   Why?  Because Emerson often pursued solitude in nature where he experienced an inward communion with God, or what he called the Oversoul in the poem that Chuck read earlier.   Emerson understood the Oversoul as a unifying force or energy, a structure in all things—including us.  As Emerson tells us, within us is “the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One. When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue; when it flows through our affections, it is love.”

Did you notice the verbs in that last sentence?  When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue; when it flows through our affections, it is love.  All these verbs imply some sort of action that interrupts us, alters us, causes us to wake up and see with new eyes. And that is how I choose to make sense out of the whole experience: my eyes were opened to the sacredness of the web of relationships that exist in my life and all life.  Is it any surprise that shortly thereafter I decided to enter the ministry?

But enough about me.  Let us spend the rest of this morning exploring the life and beliefs of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Unitarian minister who introduced transcendentalism into our denomination and radically altered how we perceive “truth.”

First, the basics: Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803.  He was born to William Emerson, the minister of First Unitarian Church in Boston .  Emerson’s first heartache occurred when his father died when he was just short of eight years old.   This left the family that was already poor, struggling even more.

 Ralph was well educated from a very early age.  At fourteen, which the financial help of his aunt, he began his career at Harvard University .  It surprised me to learn that Emerson finished school unremarkably. He wasn’t considered very exceptional and graduated in the middle of his class. Furthermore, it has been noted that his writing during his Harvard days reflected a conformity of thought—the very type of conformity he would later criticize.  Apparently, it took a while for Emerson’s particular genius to bloom.  

In 1829, at age twenty, Emerson decided to follow his father into the Unitarian ministry.  It is important to understand that as a formal movement, Unitarianism was still new at this time. They had just split from the more orthodox Congregationalist churches. So while liberal for their day, Unitarians were clearly Christian but were redefining for themselves what it meant to be Christian.

At about this same time, Emerson became engaged to Ellen Tucker. This would prove to be the second big heartbreak of his life, as Ellen died soon after their marriage.  Their life together was short, but the intensity and brevity of their relationship shaped Emerson in important ways. In Robert Richardson’s biography Emerson: The Mind on Fire, Richardson begins his book with the story of Emerson visiting Ellen’s grave. It was fourteen months after Ellen’s death and Emerson had been visiting the grave practically every day. On this particular day he dug up and opened Ellen’s coffin. We can’t know why he did this, or what effect it had. We do know, though, that Ellen’s death was a turning point in Emerson’s life. 

Yes, as Emerson was grieving the loss of his beloved Ellen, he began struggling in his ministry. Although his preaching was inspirational, he did not excel in his pastoral duties, and this caused dissatisfaction among his members. Sometimes it is hard to help others when you are drowning in despair.

In addition, Emerson’s conscience began troubling him with regards to some of the rituals he was expected to do as a minister.   His thinking by this time was quite a bit broader and more imaginative than it had been when he was at Harvard and he had begun to have serious doubts about, for example, the sacrament of communion. When he went to the parish board and asked that he be released from responsibility for serving communion, however, the board would not grant his request. It was not long after this that Emerson resigned his position. 

He spent the next period of his life lecturing and being a supply preacher at the Unitarian Church in East Lexington . Then, in 1838 the graduating class from Harvard Divinity School invited Emerson to deliver their commencement address. This brings us to his historic lecture known as the “Divinity School Address.”  Typically, these sorts of addresses were supposed to be inspirational and perhaps cutting edge -- but not revolutionary.  Those who had invited Emerson to give this address had no idea that Emerson’s address would be call into question the authority of the Christian faith based on the miracles of Jesus. Nor did they expect him to reject the notion of a personal God or to lash out at the church for suffocating the soul through empty forms and lifeless preaching.  No, they got much more than they had bargained for!

 Emerson wanted his audience to understand that revelation was still possible: that each of us can experience God directly, not just passively by reading the Bible.   Emerson had hoped to stir the graduating ministers and faculty into reexamining their habits and assumptions.  And while he was successful at electrifying some of the younger ministers, including my man, Theodore Parker, the faculty and leading Unitarian clergy were horrified for Emerson’s heresy. One professor denounced it in a Boston newspaper as "the latest form of infidelity," and a vigorous war of words ensued.  Although Emerson himself stayed out of the debate, this response from the Unitarian community was, no doubt, one of the major reasons why Emerson remained distant from the Unitarians for the remainder of his life.

Through his Divinity School Address, Emerson was pleading with the church to wake up: to come alive to the beautiful--even divine--world around them.  Emerson, you see, believed that mystical moments are open to anyone.  His biographer, Robert Richardson, Jr., writes: “…this is mysticism… of a commonly occurring and easily accepted sort.  The aim of the mystic is to attain a feeling of oneness with the divine.  Experiences of the kind Emerson …describes have happened to nearly everyone who has ever sat beneath a tree on a fine day and looked at the world with a sense of momentary peace and a feeling, however transient, of being at one with it”.[1]  So given Emerson’s definition, most or all of you have probably had mystical experiences. 

But Emerson wouldn’t want us to limit our spiritual development by strictly communing with nature and contemplating the Oversoul.  No, he would argue that to do so would be irresponsible.  David Robinson, a UU English professor at Oregon State University who has written two books on Emerson, has said that over time, Emerson devoted less time speaking about mysticism and more time emphasizing “right action “as a religious imperative.

 But not the “right action” upheld my most clergy persons.  No --instead of stressing the need to obey specific codes of ethical behavior, Emerson encouraged people to heed the soul's intuition. Indeed, intuition and perception-the ability to see anew--that is, to see with new eyes as I did during my mystical experience—the ability to see anew was critical to Emerson's understanding of morality. You see, Emerson, believed that each one of us actively participates in the Oversoul.  Through listening with our soul’s intuition and by living with a heightened sense of openness and wonder, he believed that all persons can learn to move in moral harmony with all life.  This, he argued, should be the moral compass that guides us---not popular opinion and not our own imposed will--even though we may understand everything differently next week.  Truth, as Emerson defines it, is not static.  Instead, truth is continually revealing itself in every moment of time, in every living being, and in every breath we take. But the tricky part is that we can’t figure it our by ourselves.  According to Emerson, we need to be in community if we are to discern the truth.  For while there is certainly a sacred element to the individual’s experience to the divine, there must also be a balance between the individual and society. 

So Emerson was not telling us to be iconoclasts, removing ourselves from society and living alone in the woods.  Rather, he believed that involvement in community is essential for us because it helps balance the needs of the self with the needs of community. 

 Though Emerson rarely used the pulpit again after the Divinity School Address, he awakened a significant portion of that generation of preachers. His challenge forced the new Unitarian Association of Churches to broaden its inclusivity to embrace those who, with Emerson, had no need for Christianity as it had been known, or even a formal understanding of God. It was a difficult transformation—but within a generation Unitarianism evolved in no small part because of Emerson’s ideas. 

In Emerson's day people did not have the religious freedom that we enjoy as Unitarian Universalists today. They had many things controlling them and Emerson wanted to give them a fresh and wider perspective on what was possible. Today, things may appear at first to be very different: we do seem to have a lot of personal and religious freedom. But if you scratch below the surface, you can see that the forces of constraint and conformity in our media-driven, materialistic society are more enormous that we’d like to think. Thus, I believe Emerson’s message is as relevant now as ever.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are blessed in our tradition with strains of rationality and mysticism, agnosticism and transcendentalism. If we are to take Emerson and our religious heritage seriously, then, we are called to strike a balance: to consider the needs of self AND the community, to use our heads AND our hearts, to be guided by our intellect AND our intuition.   Not an easy task, by any means.  But as we strike to do so, may each of us be filled with wonder as we discover the sacred all around us and within us.

May it be so!

Amen.

Will you please join me in the attitude of prayer or meditation?

Holy Spirit of Life –

That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives and our character.  Help us to be mindful about what we worship, for what we are worshipping, we are becoming.  Help us put love into action and that action into service.

Amen