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An Inspiration From Thoreau: Walking As Spiritual Exercise
Lee Alexander, February 24, 2008

I first counted Henry David Thoreau my friend when at the age of seven or eight I stumbled onto a copy of his Walden on my father’s bookshelves. I was an only, lonely, bookworm of a child, and I had read all of my own books until I knew them from memory. Consequently, when I came upon this beautiful little volume I was sure that it was meant for me.

Of course I had no idea what a Walden was, but, happily, the book had pictures and that was a good omen. They were fun and they helped to bridge m over the hard words. I was particularly interested in a drawing of two armies of ants clad in what I now recognize as medieval armor and engaged in battle to the death. Whatever sociological metaphors-- and there were some-- Thoreau had embedded in the Battle of the Ants story were totally lost on me, of course. To me, this was simply another child’s story in which animals-- just like my beloved Peter Rabbit--behaved like humans, so I promptly enshrined its author in my child’s pantheon of writers of children’s stories.

--And there, in my mind, he stayed until high school and college taught me that he was a Transcendentalist but gave me very little understanding of what that was! Later in life—in my Unitarian years—I began to learn that Transcendentalism was a mid-nineteenth century off-shoot of Unitarianism, and to figure out that its name explains much of its meaning: “Trans---cend” means “rise above.” Transcendentalists, in their search for ultimate truth and a personal theology strove to rise above the use of logical, rational thought processes; higher, formalized learning; and past experience (particularly past traditional religious experience). Instead, they advocated attuning one’s thoughts to the Infinite and making one’s mind receptive to those impressions and feelings—those perceptions-- that may come to one’s heart/mind intuitively, mystically. What we come to know in this way, Transcendentalism tells us, cannot be taught; its presence cannot be commanded. We can only be receptive to what may be there for us.

Many Transcendentalists found that they were most receptive in this way when they were out in the natural world, the great out-of-doors. Thoreau, with his walking—or “sauntering” as he referred to it became the best known of these. He wrote in his Journal: “I seem to see more of my kith and kin in the lichens on the rocks than in any books” and, again, “…walking is my sacred time….”

All of this resonates so profoundly with me that I am sure I must be a latter-day Transcendentalist! If it were not so presumptuous, I would like to be Thoreau’s very, very small twenty-first century counterpart.

So ……How does all of this play out in my daily experience, spirituality, receptiveness, awareness, whatever?

The process starts for me with a very short walk very early in the day—about six AM if my feline alarm clock is on the job! As soon as I have fed her, I emerge from my house, looking, I’m sure, like a prairie dog standing just outside her burrow watching for possible enemies! (It’s still fairly dark at that hour!) If I see none I move slowly down my front walk to pick up my morning newspaper, but pausing –if it’s a clear morning—at several spots along the way. At one of these I can look up through the pine tree branches and “frame” [demonstrate]—as if for a photograph—the morning star. Then, a bit farther along, a sliver of a moon. (It seems never to be in the same phase nor at the same spot twice). Some mornings, I can wink back at a blinking plane headed for the airport. (Because it’s totally silent, I don’t feel it’s a jarring note in my early morning). Before I go back inside, if the sky has lightened a bit, I can linger for one more moment to absorb the heart/breaking blue the heavens have become. It’s what the French have named “l’heure bleu”—the “blue hour”—that comes between daybreak and sunrise. If you miss it in the morning, don’t worry: it will “run” again in the evening between sunset and darkness!

If it happens that this is a foggy morning, that’s a wonderful variation on the theme: the fog somehow takes away the third dimension, and the bare tree limbs—like fine embroidery—make a black tracery against the mist.

For me, these are very special moments, and invariably I’m feeling grateful for every one of them. Somehow there is a relationship between me and what I am seeing that causes me to feel awake and alive and that almost (but not quite) makes me not need that first cup of coffee!

All of the above is, for sure, an experience in which walking plays only a small role. There are others, though!

Walking, for me, is therapeutic, and not just physically so.
On days when every piece of paper on my desk represents a problem, probably needing twenty five minutes of futile button pushing on my telephone and fifteen more of unproductive conversation with a surly person, I throw down my pen and simply explode out of my house.

I hit the ground walking as fast as I possibly can. (This is a moment when I must disagree with Thoreau’s sauntering preference.) I know this quick-start probably is bad for my heart, but it does wonders for my spirits! Somehow, as I hit a stride that’s comfortable for me, it seems as if I’m walking in sync with the universe, or as if I were marching in an invisible parade or dancing to good jazz! On good days, when I’ve covered about a mile, a little thought slides into my mind: about Problem A I could do so-and-so. Yes, that sounds as if it might work. About Problem B, I could consult with WhoZit tomorrow. He would know the best way to go. And as for Problem C, I don’t have to make a decision until next week, anyway. So…by the time I’m ready to head back home, it’s as if I now have neatly-folded laundry in front of me, and I can pack it into an imaginary backpack. Slinging that over my shoulders, I know it’s there—of course I do –but I also know that now I can travel with it!

Speaking of Thoreau’s “saunterings,” these were not always a short stroll around Walden Pond. In 1845 he and his brother, with their homemade row boat, hiked and paddled the Concord and Merrimack Rivers for a week, studying and reveling in the life along their banks, both animal and human. (Thoreau would later write this experience into his first book.)

My only “sauntering” experiences remotely comparable to his have been, first, a North Georgia Elderhostel weekend when I sneaked off from the group and walked the Appalachian Trail for about a mile—just so I could truthfully say I’d done that!
My second venture was much more satisfying. In the course of a visit with family in Alaska, for the first time in my life, I slept in the out- of-doors one cold night beside a glacier lake. All night, enormous chunks of ice “calved off” the glacier and hit the water with a mighty crash. With each crash, I would half wake up and say silently to myself, “What have I ever done to be worthy of having this incredible experience?”—To encounter a world that I had never met before out side of a book?

If I don’t altogether share Thoreau’s preference for “sauntering” (as opposed to a brisk walk) I am totally enthusiastic about his preoccupation with the animals he met as he walked. No matter how far he roamed from home, he still considered them to be his next-door neighbors in the world.

Besides the red and black ants that he introduced me to so long ago, he wrote fondly about a laughing loon, a winged cat, a mother partridge who brought her brood to visit him, and a mouse who became his friendly lunchtime companion.

If my contact with Alaska animals was not so up-close-and-personal as Thoreau’s with his New England friends, the technologies of travel available to me but not to him, gave me an edge in numbers. In a short week I was privileged to see puffins, ptarmigan, seals, a mink, a moose (the size of a horse and a half), flocks of Dahl sheep, and, best of all, a sea otter who was having lunch. (I fell so in love with that guy that I had his portrait painted!) [SHOW PAINTING]. Footnote: Grizzlies were there but I didn’t see any in the flesh. None of these creatures had I ever seen in their natural environment and I gazed in awe and wonder.
With each new, exhilarating encounter, I had the feeling that these were moments of tremendous significance for me—perhaps an instance of Transcendental “mystical” awareness? And is awareness perhaps a form of worship? Whatever these moments of connectedness mean I’ll likely never be able fully to understand or explain. I do know that I feel a strong kinship with these creatures, and recognize them as traveling companions in a system so vast that we may never completely understand its beginnings nor foretell its future.

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"REALITY ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE"
Rev. Joan Schneider
October 14, 2007

Rev. Ray Michaels was the first Unitarian Universalist minister I ever heard. An old Universalist, his sermons were thoughtful and gentle. I remember one in which he suggested that the problem with the world today is antimacassars.
We don’t use them any more.
For those of you too young to remember, antimacassars are those small decorative coverings that fit on the arms and backs of upholstered furniture to prevent wear and soiling.
Macassar was the hair tonic that men used to slick their hair back. It was greasy and messy and when they sat on upholstery, it rubbed off.
Therefore, anti-macassar.
I can still see my grandmother crocheting those little things and putting them gently on the arms and backs of sofas and chairs.
Ray said the antimacassar was of a more polite – a more civil society when people cared more about one another and their possessions. The return of the antimacassar, said Ray, would restore us to civility.
The very sound of the word – antimacassar - bespeaks of a – you should forgive the phrase – a kinder gentler world
I don’t find the world today to be very kind or very gentle.
In the several decades since I heard that sermon, society has grown ever further away from the antimacassar and all that it stands for.
We no longer attempt to protect our upholstered furniture.
Even before it wears out, we replace it.
Appliances used to last forever, and when something went wrong, we took them to the friendly neighborhood repair shop. Now we throw it away and buy new – and the friendly neighborhood repair shop has gone the way of the antimacassar.
Everyone is so busy – in such a hurry.
Everything is too noisy.
The background noise in a movie is enough to knock me out of my seat.
It is hard to find a restaurant any more where people can hear one another.
I hate shopping.
Notice the front of your order of worship. That is what the town in which I grew up looked like about the time I was born. That sign “Kahn’s” sticking out was my grandfather’s store.
Some of you may have come from towns like that. Perhaps Savannah once looked like that.
No big box stores, no super malls, no television or internet.
I worked in that store as soon as I could see over the counter. I can’t even imagine any of us talking on the phone while a customer was waiting for service. –
Or arguing with a customer.
The customer was always right. No matter what.
Transactions were straightforward. An item cost what it cost. And a sale was really a sale. People paid with cash money – or wrote a check. No such thing as a credit card.
To the best of my knowledge, the only place interest was charged or paid was the bank.
Ma Bell owned the telephone. And it cost what it cost.
No special deals that changed overnight.
We didn’t even walk around the house talking on the phone, let alone in our car, on the street or in a restaurant. We couldn’t. It was attached to the wall.
I had no electronic toys – neither did anyone else.
And we were rarely bored. If we claimed to be our parents could rapidly find a job for us to do.
We didn’t need parental supervision to be out around town Everybody knew everybody’s children and were not a bit hesitant to let us and our parents know when we were out of line.
.Nothing seems to be the way was.
Everything has changed since my grandmother made antimacassars.
Well, Judy Dinehart really let you have it last week. For those of you who weren’t here, Judy talked about church growth and said you have not grown over the nearly five decades that you have existed. And that it is your fault.
The story Judy told was that you ran the church the way you had always run the church and you blamed others for your lack of growth, rather than seeking out and listening to people who might have some expertise in how churches work.
Certainly, those of us who serve you understand ways in which what Judy said had a ring of truth.
On the other hand, I think she may have been a bit over tough.
I don’t think your communal story needs to be about blame – to make anybody wrong.
To do that would be akin to scolding a three year old for not being able to do advanced calculus.
It may be easy for Judy to recognize a problem and instantly turn herself around. For most of us, change is hard – change is painful and we rarely can do it all at once.
I think Mark Twain nailed it when he wrote “Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any (one) but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.”
In 1993, Unitarian Universalist author, Walter Truett Anderson, explored the changing face of society in his book, Reality isn’t What it Used to Be.
One issue Anderson raises is the extent to which we are not even aware of the way in which different people live in different realities;
We have talked about that – how my Midwestern ways can bump against your southern sensibilities. Even though I try to be aware I am frequently surprised anew.
Words have entirely different meanings to different people depending on the culture and generation from which they emerge.
Since "author unknown" penned this morning's reading, we have added an entirely new lexicon to the language.
My father died in 1969. If he rose today, how would he understand words like; hardware, software, modem, fax?
A 1980's study compared school discipline problems in the 1940's to those in the 1980's
During the 1940's major problems were: talking, chewing gum, running in the hallways, getting out of place in line, wearing improper clothing, not putting paper in wastebaskets.
During the 80's problems were drug and alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, assault, arson, bombings.
The difference between 1940 and 1980 is staggering. The difference between 1980 and today is only a matter of frequency and intensity. The issues are the same.
Quoting Anderson, "the collapse of old ways of belief and the coming into being of a new world view threatens all existing construction of reality and all power structures attached to them -- and a lot of people aren't going to like it."
Many of you never knew a time before television, computers and cell phones.
And so the world today makes sense to you.
It doesn’t to me.
And I don’t like it.
I don’t like rude or disinterested salespeople. I don’t like talking to someone in India whose speech I can’t understand when I need service of some kind.
I don’t like most of the music I hear today, I don’t hear many melodies anymore – neither do I hear many words although most singers appear to be yelling into the mike.
I know I am some kind of dinosaur, but I mostly don’t like that my grandchildren can’t be safe playing outside their homes unsupervised.
Nothing ever seems to be the way it was.
And truth to tell, I’m not at all sure that anything is the way it is.
Because each of us sees the world from our own unique perspective.
And my small town Midwestern perspective is quite different from those of you who grew up in the south, or the north or the west.
When I was very young, I got frequent severe pains in the back of my legs.
Adults told me they were growing pains. To this day, I can’t understand how someone who never grew beyond 5’2” could have that much pain growing.
When I was a sophomore in high school, my grandmother bought me a “sensible” winter coat.
She bought it large so I would grow into it. After my fourth baby, I gave it away. It seemed that the only way for me to grow enough to fit the coat was to get pregnant.
I had done that enough.
Judy is right. Your church has grown in the time we have been together, The first year I was with you, you certified 77 members.
Last year you certified 93. Membership now stands at 103.
I can’t know how it felt to be here before I came, but I have heard the stories. And some of you tell me it wasn’t too pleasant and many people left – by Judy’s count in nearly fifty years 652 people have joined this congregation since it was formed in 1958. The current membership is 103.
Of 652 members only 103 are left.
That number is staggering. You do need to pay attention to what has caused so many people to go away.
You may need to make some changes.
. But - wait a minute.
You may not have grown to your full potential but you did some rather amazing things.
For example, you stayed alive. For the first time in history, there is a thriving Unitarian Universalist Church in Savannah Georgia.
Well-intentioned people tried in the 1850’s. And they couldn’t keep it going. Others tried it in the 1930’s and didn’t even leave a footprint.
You did it. And next year this congregation will celebrate 50 years. And that is no small accomplishment.
But now you say you are ready to grow.
That is great.
Savannah needs our progressive voice. And liberal people moving to Savannah need this place.
We are at the stage where the coat is still too big and I am not sure you want to get big enough to wear it.
Deep, deep down – isn’t there a place within you that wants it to stay just like it is.
I remember feeling that way when we moved to Hendersonville. I had found this incredible town and I wanted to put a fence around it so nobody could get in. I wanted it to stay the way it was.
Because growing means change.
And with change comes pain.
Growing pains.
I don’t think I agree with Washington Irving when he wrote, “there is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place.”
Who wants to be bruised anywhere?
And I suspect that most of us – long term and new - in some way – at some level are asking the same questions – “with all this change, where will I fit in? Will there be a lap for me?”
Yes, change is hard – and frightening - and we need to name our concerns. We need to hear each other’s concerns.
That is part of being in right relationship.
We don’t need to blame.
And we don’t have to agree.
But we really do need to listen to each other
Yes, the world is changing faster than I can grasp.
And I am feeling bruised by much of it.
Not only is culture today noisy and inconsiderate, our values have changed.
Technology brings war and famine and rape into our living rooms in a way never possible a generation before.
And mass media influences public opinion in ways unimagined by Guttenberg when he unleashed his printing press
When “Gone With the Wind” was first released, my grandmother would not allow me to see it.
Why? Because Rhett Butler said “that bad word.” And he carried Scarlet O’Hara upstairs for “you know what.”
Today “you know what” is displayed graphically on the large and small screen along with violence, blood and gore. And the language would set my grandmother spinning in her grave.
Whether media violence sex, disrespect causes or simply reflects societal norms is the subject for a sociological study.
The religious question is, in changing – often uncivil times, who am I?
Really?
Who am I?
And how will I help or hinder inevitable change?
Take a moment if you will to feel what all these changes are like. Will you sit back and fold your arms – tight up against yourself. Feel that posture of holding it.
Now, uncross – and re-cross your arms the other way.
For most of us that is really hard.
No wonder we avoid change and the resulting growing pains.
But we can if we are gentle with one another and ourselves and remember to live in right relations, begin the process of creating the new the story of a thriving, growing congregation.
I know this because I am doing it in my personal life.
I certainly do not like the role I was forced into when I became a widow.
But after 14 months of denial and trying to maintain my old story, I decided to make some changes.
To create a new story – a more realistic story.
From the gold in both Charlie’s and my wedding ring mixed together, I am having a new ring made.
And, I have started legal proceedings to drop the hyphen from my name. The person to whom the hyphen connected me is no longer here.
What will my life look like? I have no clue, but I know I need to start becoming whoever I will be when I am not Charlie’s wife.
Speaking on a talk show out of California, Dr. Anderson said that he is confident that our task -- both as humans and as humanity -- is to mature. To grow beyond what we currently are, while respecting and honoring where we’ve come from”
. I miss Charlie more than words can express. I expect I always will. But I have denied and fought his illness and death for too long. It is time.
And so my new ring and my new name are the beginning of a story yet to be told.
What is the fact of your life today?
What is your vision of reality?
Your story?
What is the ground on which you stand?
And what new reality does it allow in or keep out?
Judy, you preached a powerful sermon. I hope your fellow congregants heard you.
At the same time, be a bit patient – give the folks who worked hard so that we may be here today a bit of time “To grow beyond what we currently are, while respecting and honoring where we’ve come from”
To create together the new story.
Anderson writes: "life is a matter of telling ourselves stories about life, and of savoring stories about life told by others, and of living our lives according to such stories, and of creating ever-new and more complex stories about stories -- and this story making is not just about human life, but is human life.
In this way, we try, in the words of Tennessee Williams to "snatch the eternal from the desperately fleeting."
I guess I’ll go home and make a few antimacassars.