BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay.
So begins one of the most famous sermons in Unitarian Universalist history. In 1838, a man by the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson gave the graduation speech for a group of men (yes, they were all men in those days) who were graduating from Harvard Divinity School, ready to go out into the world as Unitarian ministers.
It seems like a kind of surprising way to start a speech for graduating ministry students. For one thing he basically starts out with the word “refulgent,” which I suspect was not the kind of word you heard every day, even back then. (In case you’re wondering, it means “shining.” I had to look it up.) But what seems even more surprising to me is the subject. I mean, you’d think that a sermon for new ministers would start with “Congratulations,” or “Here’s how to do a good job,” or “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” or something. But no, he launches into a poetic statement about just how beautiful it is outside.
It turns out that he wasn’t just throwing the whole nature thing in to get people in a good mood for the rest of the sermon. Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with a group of his friends, had some ideas about religion that were pretty different from what other people were preaching at the time—even the Unitarians. Emerson and his friends, who we call the Transcendentalists, said that while there was religious truth in the Bible, that there was religious truth in plenty of other places as well. Not only did they say that truth could be found in the writings of religions other than Christianity, they also said that you could find religious truth directly in nature. Emerson said that Jesus was important, not because he was somehow closer or more connected to God than anyone else, but rather because he was more aware than the rest of us of how much we are all connected to God.
Jesus, Emerson said, mattered because of the things he had to say about love and compassion and justice and finding our connection to the Holy—not because he was a totally different kind of person from you and me. The Transcendentalists said that you didn’t necessarily need Jesus or the Bible or even a church or a minister to be a truly religious person. Those things were all good, but the really crucial thing was to listen to your soul, which would lead you toward living a good life. And one of the best ways to listen to your soul, Emerson thought, was—you guessed it—to spend time in nature.
Now, these ideas may not sound totally amazing to you, 170 years later. But believe me, at the time they were really a shocker. What?! How could those Transcendentalists say that since the natural world is full of amazing miracles every day, it didn’t really matter whether or not Jesus did miracles?! Huh?! How could those Transcendentalists claim that since the way to really understand religion is through each individual person’s own mind and conscience, that allpeople, including women and Black people, should be able to get an education and think for themselves?
Shocking!
OK, like I said, maybe not so shocking these days. But it’s worth knowing that the freedom of ideas that many of us grew up with came to us from people who were willing to take big risks to think and speak in new ways.
So, you might want to honor Ralph Waldo Emerson by going outside and having a good look (and smell and listen and touch) at the trees or birds or flowers. Go ahead, “draw the breath of life” into your lungs and feel your ribs—and maybe your heart and soul—expand. And if you’re in a part of the world where you’re heading into midwinter, you might want to know that in the speech quoted above, Emerson also criticized a preacher he once heard for being not nearly as real and beautiful and alive as the snowstorm that was going on outside. Maybe you can even find your own “chapel” outside: a special spot where you can go to see if nature has anything to say to your soul. Try it—you might just end up finding out what it’s like to feel “refulgent” yourself!
