"Find a Stillness "

I don't really make any New Year's resolutions. I have never stopped - or started - anything on the first of January. The beginning of the New Year seems arbitrary, its power a myth, its clean slate highly suspect. I have made casual, sometimes searching inventories of my self at the New Year, however. They invariably prompt various self- improvement impulses, some vague, some painfully specific, perhaps closer to resolutions than I realize.

I haven't considered these impulses to be terribly deep, let alone spiritual, but after reading Thoreau's words, I wonder if I've underestimated them. "What temple, what fane, what sacred place can there be, but the innermost part of my being?" wrote Henry David Thoreau in his journal. "The possibility of my improvement," he continued, "that is to be cherished." [1]

Pointing out how the simple human yearning to improve oneself is a sacred act is just one example of Henry David Thoreau's instinct for the spiritual quality of everyday life. As one of our Unitarian forebears, he is our best teacher and guide to what a spiritual life can be if you choose to live it - as many of us do - without theology, without God or gods, without the traditional consolations or practices of religion, but on our own, creatures of the earth, with inner lives no less worthy or deep because of who we are.

His example is especially relevant at the New Year. We emerge from the holiday season with a fresh awareness of where we are in life. We are crashing from the annual sugar binge fueled by too many activities and fraught with emotional intensity - but we are also returning to our natural state, back to the rhythms of daily life, its fullness and its emptiness.

We become aware of longings, different for each of us. Longing for simplicity in the midst of multiple demands on our time; longing for connection during a lonely stretch; longing for peace and quiet when everywhere we go is noisy and confusing. Whatever it is, our longing is real and grounded in life as we experience it here and now.

That is why Thoreau is so refreshing. "The fact is," he writes, "you have got to take the world on your shoulders like Atlas . . . ." You will be weighed down sometimes. Accept it - and then let it go." After a long day's walk with it," he advises, "pitch it into a hollow place, sit down and eat your luncheon. Unexpectedly, by some immortal thoughts, you will be compensated." [2]

The contemplative life is easier said than done. But if we begin as Thoreau does, just with ourselves and our burdens, and ask ourselves only to let them go from time to time, we get a sense of what might be possible. A space opens up and gives us room to breathe. This is what we do when we decide not to eat lunch at our desk. Something I need to remember more often.

While writing this sermon, I became frustrated by how slow it was going. I kept looking at the same sentences, churning over them. Then I thought, here I am writing a sermon about the need for contemplative time and I don't know what to do with myself. So I got the dog and went for a walk. Soon we were viewing the neighborhood rabbit, Sugar Bunny, who holds court in a vacant lot, and meeting a church member and her children on the way. The sun was out, we were alive and enjoying the world, and I thought, this is all Thoreau meant - so simple, though not always so easy to do.

It takes practice to allow ourselves some contemplative time, because it feels unproductive, although strangely enough, it often is the most productive time of the day. Thoreau wrote in his journal, "The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd [the] day with work, but will saunter to [the] task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relation to [the] day. He [or she] is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk."[3]

Every day of my working life I have longed to be this kind of laborer. Neither anxious nor driven, cushioned by wide margins of time, always present, always ready, when needed for ministry. Yet when I have such a day, I feel like I'm getting away with something.

I "exaggerate the value of the husk," to use Thoreau's image. We all do. Captive to institutional time, we value its products, not others.

Henry David Thoreau took a subversive approach to spirituality. He challenged people to question how they used their time, the exaggerated value of their products, and the great costs of making them. In his essay "Walking," Thoreau writes: "I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon - I think that they deserve some credit for not having committed suicide long ago."[4]

For Thoreau, walking was a form of meditation, which freed him from the pressures of time and put him into direct contact with nature. Not everyone is as mobile - or lives near the woods, as he did. Thoreau was a self-taught naturalist, and spent much of his time studying his habitat. We urban creatures might have to make do with a chair at the window. Thoreau would scold us for counting cars or spying on the neighbors, but he would approve of contemplative study of a spider's web, or the comings and goings of a hummingbird, or the blooming of a flower in winter, such as we have here.

Contact with nature is vital. We are part of a vast living system, that "living web that runs though us to all the universe," as Robert T. Weston described it. Awareness of our connection is within our human capacity. This connection helps us to understand the cycles of life, why we die, and the nature of loss, as we heard earlier in the story "Grandmother's Gift." We cannot be whole or happy without this awareness, though we often forget. Thoreau would have us take the time to remember.

Remembering where we are in relation to others - to other living creatures, to the earth and the universe, to life itself, is not about recalling the past, however; it is about the here and now. In "Walking," Thoreau writes, "Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He [or she] is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barnyard within our horizon, it is belated. . . . There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament - the gospel according to this moment."[5]

So there it is, "the gospel according to this moment," encouraging us to live more closely to nature, rejecting exaggerated values and reclaiming time, daring to locate the center of our worth in life itself. We don't need anything more. Which is not to say that it is easy. Only that it is essential. Henry David Thoreau, that quirky Yankee who marched to a different drummer, can still show us the way.

[1] Journal, 1851.

[2] Letters, 1860.

[3] Journal, 1842. (Language degenderized by JM)

[4] "Walking," 1862.

[5] Ibid.