Transcending Mystery and Wonder

January 5, 2003

The Rev. Gretchen Woods

READING (describing Emerson’s response to a visit to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in 1833)

The exhibits Emerson saw at the Jardin des Plantes were laid out on Jessieu’s natural system of classification, and Emerson’s excited response to the exhibits was in large part a response to their arrangement. Classification implies connection . . .

Emerson was fascinated by the web of relation and analogy, the very stuff of classifications, which, said Herschel, “cross and intersect one another, as it were, in every possible way, and have for their very aim to interweave all the objects of nature together in a close and compact web of mutual relations and dependence.”

…He gazed at the exhibits and saw relationships everywhere. Not only were the specimens linked to each other, they were also linked to him: “Not a form so grotesque, so savage, nor so beautiful but it is an expression of some property inherent in man the observer.” Perhaps for the first time since Ellen’s death, Emerson felt an agitated, sympathetic -- almost physical -- connection with the natural world. He was powerfully affected. “I feel the centipede in me -cayman, carp, eagle and fox. I am moved by strange sympathies. I say continually, I will be a naturalist.”

Emerson’s interests now took a marked turn toward the scientific. He did not become a scientist or even a naturalist; for all his interest in the physical world his reaction to the Jardins des Plantes was not that of a scientist. But from now on he acknowledged an unbreakable tie between his own mind and the natural world, and in his investigations into that tie he never lost his interest in the methods and materials of science.

…A distinguishing mark of both American and German transcendentalism is to insist on the connection between the mind and nature. In Emerson’s work, as in that of Thoreau later, the interest in nature is at least partly an interest in what science can teach us about nature. Emerson’s interest in science and his interest in the natural world reinforce each other. He read books of science and scientific biography. He became particularly fascinated with the working of the scientific mind, with the nature of scientific knowledge, and with the strange union of precision and wonder in scientific inquiry. Over the years, Emerson’s openness to science kept his thought ballasted with fact and observation and his writing anchored solidly in the real world. (pp. 140-142)

SERMON: Transcending Mystery and Wonder

When I first encountered to Unitarian Universalism in 1968, I was deeply moved by a sermon by Tony Perrino in which he introduced me to this faith by emphasizing our deep commitment to rational approach to religion and our openness to the “great Universalist heart,” of which Scott Alexander often speaks. He went on to say that we need to use both mind and heart more in our ongoing religious quest. As a closet mystic, I was hooked, converted, and joined All Souls, Schenectady, not long thereafter. (Having a great madrigal group didn’t hurt my commitment either.)

A year later I moved to Michigan and found the Birmingham Unitarian Church, led by Bob Marshall. While the congregation was very welcoming, I quickly learned to hide my mysticism there, as Bob was scornful of anything he identified as “oogly-boogly.” The members also seemed quite adamant about avoiding anything that smacked of Christianity or spirituality. I questioned whether I really belonged in this movement, though it was an ideal place for my atheist husband to stay in community with our family. I kept my mouth shut, and singing in the choir, then becoming a soloist, helped me create a place in that congregation.

So what has happened in Unitarian Universalism since 1970 that has enabled us to assert as our first “Source,” “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which move us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life?” How did the UUA through a process which continued from 1981 to 1985 come up with this language and conviction?

In 1967, shortly after the merger of the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association in 1961, the new Unitarian Universalist Association conducted a survey of the primary theological perspectives of the new organization. While seven threads appeared, the primary three were theist, humanist, and naturalist. These were not new, but show up throughout our history. Unitarianism and Universalism began as offshoots of Christianity and its forbear, Judaism, in the third and fourth century ACE. That put us strongly in the theist camp. The Puritans and Pilgrims, our direct forebears, were clearly of that perspective. It was the 19^th Transcendentalism of Emerson and Parker that kept theism but ditched supernaturalism for a natural theology which still inspires many of us. We shall return to that in a moment

In 1933, three Unitarian ministers of the most liberal branch of our movement were key signers of the first Humanist Manifesto: John H. Dietrich, Charles F. Potter, and Curtis W. Reese. We will explore this in much more depth in a sermon on Humanism.

The naturalist branch is represented both by Universalists, who were often farmers and independent thinkers of small rural towns, and by the influx of women into ministry through the 1970’s and 80’s. This will also be covered more fully in an upcoming sermon.

But key to this first “Source” of our religious movement is the recognition from the beginning of our movements that the experience of the individual is held in high esteem by our faith. We are not asked to park our brains at the door, nor are we expected to disregard our personal experience of mystery and wonder.

No greater proponent of this perspective can be found than Ralph Waldo Emerson, most famous of the 19^th century Transcendentalists. In 2003 we celebrate the bicentennial of his birth. He was born on May 25, 1803. (William Ellery Channing founded the American Unitarian Society on May 25, 1825. It is indeed an auspicious date for us!) Needless to say, the General Assembly of our Association this summer in Boston will celebrate Emerson.

Clearly, from the reading this morning, we find that Emerson was moved both by nature and the workings of his own mind. As David Robinson tells us:

His first book, Nature (1836, propounded an intuitional and idealistic system of religion based upon the monistic unity of God, nature, and the human soul. He continued to develop and enunciate this message is lectures, essays, and poems, which were met with enthusiasm by many of the young but skepticism by others. His Divinity School Address at Harvard (1838) criticized the historical Christianity of Andrew Norton and other Unitarians and caused a storm of controversy, although Emerson was always unwilling to debate his opponents or extend the theological dispute. His reputation grew in both religious and literary circles, and in the 1840’s and 1850’s he seemed to complement his youthful message with much pragmatic wisdom, always keeping the moral life and the necessity for the continuing culture of the soul as fundamental premises. His thought continues to be influential in the twentieth century, and he is generally acknowledged to be one of the two or three most important American authors of the nineteenth century. (Robinson, David. The Unitarian and the Universalists, Greenwood Press, p 253.)

Emerson is a great leader of those who believe in the possibility of apprehending mystery and wonder through the human mind and of being part of that mystery and wonder at the same time. This recognition of human being as both immanent (though Emerson never used that terminology which we hear most often currently from Marcus Borg)) and transcendent is at the heart of mystical experience. This perspective has been re-welcomed into the arena of Unitarian Universalism over the past decade, though it has always been part of our heritage.

Those of us who experience wonder through nature are especially comfortable with Emerson, given his emphatic sense of connection with nature. Our earth-based approach to religion draws many parallels.

The key is that Emerson - and most of those who have had mystical experiences do not see a need to separate immanent from transcendent. He said, “When I look at the rainbow I find myself the center of its arch. But so are you; and so is the man that sees it a mile from both of us.” (Robertson, pp. 94-95.)

I found it fascinating that Emerson was among the first to translate the Sufi poets, notably Hafez into English. In April of 1846, he discovered Hafez through a copy of Joseph von Hammer’s Der Diwan von Mohammed Schemsed-din Hafis. “He soon became enthralled with the work of Hafez, the fourteenth-century Sufi master and greatest of Persian lyric poets.” (Robertson, p. 423.) “Emerson eventually filled a 250-page notebook with translations from Persian poets, mostly Hafez.” (Ibid. p. 424.) “. . . every line of every poem testified that the spiritual appears to us only through the senses.” (Ibid.) For Hafez and Emerson, religion is ecstatic, sensual, and filled with joy, rather than the “corpse-cold Christianity” of his native New England at the time. The Sufis came to the perspective of human being as potentially immanent and transcendent long before Emerson and deeply affected his thinking about mystery and wonder.

But we must also not lose sight of the connection between science and this sense of mystery and wonder. Emerson was inspired to study science directly as a result of his experiences with nature in the Jardin des Plantes, though his wanderings through the countryside of Massachusetts both before and after are not to be overlooked. I believe that Emerson would currently be reading Chet Raymo (especially his Natural Prayers ), Fritjov Capra, and Candace Pert, all of whom see a direct connection between direct experience of mystery and wonder and the explorations of physics and microbiology.

It is, for me, a great part of the genius of Unitarian Universalism and its forbears that we have not had to disconnect from the discoveries of science to continue our religious quest. “Revelation is not sealed,” we assert. Charles Steinmetz and Linus Pauling found a comfortable religious home under our roof. And thus may it ever continue.

So, throughout our history, we have maintained an openness to science while also remaining open to many ways of knowing, including the intuitional and mystical. Without that sort of openness, the benzene ring might not have been discovered through a dream, George Washington Carver might not have unlocked the secrets of the peanut, and my father would probably not have earned 65 patents. Our sense of mystery and wonder is not in opposition to science and knowledge but directly related to it and seeking to deepen and widen that sense.

Perhaps this is best illustrated by the poem of Alfred Noyes:

Knowledge, they say,

drives wonder from the world;

they say it still, though all the dust’s ablaze

with marvels at their feet,

while Newton’s laws foretell

that knowledge one day

shall be song.

We seem like children wandering by the shore,

Gathering pebbles colored by the wave;

While the great sea of truth, from sky to sky

Stretches before us,

Boundless, unexplored.

My wish for each of us in this New year is that each of us may attain and retain direct experience of that transcending (and immanent) mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life. By recognizing the mystery and wonder within us (the immanent) as well as the amazing mystery and wonder around us ( the transcendent), we open our possibilities for life lived deeply and fully. And when we do that, we know we are connected to all of that life. Then we shall assuredly become effective peacemakers in a world of war, lovers in a world of hate, and whole and holy people.

So Be It! Blessed Be!

Gretchen Woods