Category: Emerson, Thoreau, and Friends
-
Seize and Squeeze
Seize the day and squeeze it for all the juice it's worth. Repeat tomorrow. And no day without a little Emerson: . . . we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as…
-
The Lethal Chamber of the Soul
I float the suggestion that the problem of the external world was originally ontological, not epistemological. The material world is the great lethal chamber of the soul. Only spiritual heroes can arouse themselves sufficiently to escape from its stupefying effect upon consciousness. (Paul Brunton) The Brunton quotation is distinctly Emersonian, as witness: The influence of…
-
The Fearful are Easy to Control
Is the sheep your totemic animal? A sheep in a mask? A dose of Emerson may help if it is not too late. "He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay "Courage") (I note that the pronoun as it functions in…
-
Ralph Waldo Emerson on Prayer
From his magnificent essay, "Self Reliance": Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — anything less than all good, — is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works…
-
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
"The sky is the daily bread of the eyes," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson magnificently and truly. And this from a man who lived in New England where there is no sky to speak of. What would he have written had he been able to bathe his thoughts in the lambent light of the desert Southwest?
-
The Pleasures of the Mountain Bike
What follows is from my first weblog, and is dated 4 May 2004. The photo was taken this morning by Dennis Murray, fellow aficionado of strenuous pursuits. ………………… Time was, when running was my exercise, the daily bread of my cardiovascular system. But then the injuries came: chondromalacia patellae in both knees, shin splints, plantar…
-
Reader Considers Converting to Islam. Would Christian Unitarianism Satisfy his Scruples?
Here is the beginning of the letter he sent me: I've been considering converting to Islam.You've had a big part in this, though I know it won't please you to hear it. Your arguments against the coherency of the Incarnation are hard to get past. My arguments against the Chalcedonian, 'two-natures-one-person' theology of the Incarnation…
-
Thomas Merton on Henry Thoreau
Journals, vol. 4, p. 235, 8 August 1962: Thoreau's idleness was an incomparable gift and its fruits were blessings that America has unfortunately never learned to appreciate. Yet he made his gift, though it was not asked for. And he went his way. If he had followed the advice of his neighbors in Concord, America…
-
A Thoreauvian Prayer
Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high, As I can now discern with this clear eye. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Collected Poems
-
Something Snowflakes and ‘Liberals’ Need to Understand
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted." Ralph Waldo Emerson, 8 November 1838
-
Emerson on the Seduction of the Senses
The influence of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind to that degree that the walls of time and space have come to look real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign of insanity. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Oversoul"
-
First Day of the Year, First Hike of the Year
I began the year right with a two-hour ramble right out my front door over the local hills. Very cold temps ramped up the usual saunter to a serious march. I always go light: short pants, T-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, bandanna, light cotton gloves. Rain that turned to snow overnight gave Superstition Mountain a serious dusting.…
-
Saying and Asserting are Not the Same
To utter a declarative sentence is to say it. But the saying of a declarative sentence need not be an asserting of it or its content. Suppose I want to give an example of a declarative sentence in a language class. I say, "The average temperature on Mars is the same as on Earth." I…
-
On Diachronic or ‘Emersonian’ Consistency
Yesterday I said I was opposed to ". . . misquotation, misattribution, the retailing of unsourced quotations, the passing off of unchecked second-hand quotations, and sense-altering context suppression." An example of the last-mentioned follows. Here is a famous passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" rarely quoted in full: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of…
-
He Understood the Principle
Henry Thoreau was once asked whether he had read a newspaper account of a local suicide. He replied that he didn't need to; he understood the principle. This anecdote comports comfortably with an observation Henry David makes somewhere in his journal: Read not The Times; read the eternities.