"Mothers of the Mind"

READING

This month we observe the bicentennial of the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist, who left a lasting mark on our tradition. Emerson was a complex figure, perhaps even more so because of the role of women in his life. The reading takes a look at his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson. Here is what Emerson's biographer, Robert D. Richardson, Jr., writes about her in Emerson: Mind on Fire.

"The single most important part of Emerson's education was that provided by … Mary Moody Emerson. It was she and not the Boston ministers or Harvard professors who set the real intellectual standards for the young Emerson and his brothers. Her correspondence with him is the single best indicator of his inner growth and development until he was well over thirty. Emerson said that in her prime his aunt was 'the best writer in Massachusetts.' He noted that she set an 'immeasurably high standard' and that she fulfilled a function 'which nothing else in his education could supply.' She was widely read and formidably articulate. She could be damagingly candid. She possessed enormous force of character and limitless energy, and she had a gift for attracting young people. She was a tireless controversialist; she was a vigorous theologian. Above all, she was an original religious thinker, almost a prophet. Her writing, which has been shamefully ignored, is personal and testamentary; her strange style has great energy, beauty, and intensity. …

"Mary Emerson's oddities have made her a Dickensian figure for us. She was four feet three inches tall. She had her bed made in the shape of a coffin. She wore her burial shroud when she traveled, and she traveled so much she wore out several shrouds. Her energy was phenomenal. … She was amazingly outspoken. The obituary writer for the Boston Commonwealth said 'she was thought to have the power of saying more disagreeable things in half an hour than any person living.' Emerson commented, "I see he was well acquainted with Aunt Mary." She left a trail of anecdotes behind her, all vivid enough, but mostly serving to replace her original genius with an eccentric caricture. She was at bottom not an amusing maiden aunt but a visionary."

SERMON

William and Ruth, Ralph Waldo Emerson's parents, were conventional people, unlike the passionate and unpredictable Aunt Mary. They may not have entirely approved of her influence over their children. She sent the young boys this advice: "Always do what you are afraid to do," which may have given William and Ruth some reason to worry about what fears their sons might choose to overcome.

But William died when Ralph Waldo Emerson was only eight. Ruth scraped by, absorbed in the daily tasks of survival and religious devotion. Tutors came and went. Aunt Mary remained the most important teacher to the end.

Mary Moody Emerson challenged the young Ralph Waldo Emerson to take risks, to live with honesty and intensity, and to meet her high standards. It was Aunt Mary who directed Emerson in his reading and commented on his writing; and it was Aunt Mary who listened to Emerson speak of his inner life and struggles. They had a life long correspondence about everything that was important to them. Emerson wrote to Aunt Mary about his grief over the many deaths in his family as well as his reading and writing and spiritual formation; about his doubts about Christianity, especially the sacraments; about the conflicts that led to his resignation from the ministry.

Mary Moody Emerson was more than an intellectual confidante and sounding-board, however. She was an original thinker, whose work Emerson cherished. It wasn't just what she thought or wrote, either; it was who she was. "Above all," Richardson writes, "her hunger for personal experience of the strongest, most direct kind must have pushed [young Emerson] to settle for nothing less authentic, less direct, or less original than his own life." Long after he had achieved success as a writer and lecturer, Emerson devoted himself to editing her writings - four volumes he kept for his own personal use, but never published.

Perhaps because of Aunt Mary's early influence, many other women also enriched Ralph Waldo Emerson's life, in many different ways. Women formed a large part of his enthusiastic following as a public intellectual and lecturer. His personal relationships were varied and intense, despite his posturing as a proponent of "self-reliance" and going it alone. In fact, he was rarely alone.

His marriages and family and circle of friends were all very important to him. Following the tragic death of his first wife, Ellen Tucker, a loss he grieved for the rest of his life; he resigned from his church, went to Europe, then came home and started a new career. He married again, and his second wife, Lydia Jackson, kept his household running despite his long absences and many visitors.

One of their frequent house guests was a serious intellectual and romantic rival, Margaret Fuller. Richardson writes, "Emerson's 1836 meeting with Fuller started one of the most important relationships of his life. They were friends and colleagues, but there was more than intellectual comradeship in their give and take. ... She ... gave him new standards for friendship and for a kind of social openness that he found attractive but difficult. She taught him something about the situation of women in the nineteenth century."

Margaret Fuller was brilliant, intense, outspoken figure, who eventually left Emerson behind. She traveled to New York, where she picked up work as a journalist from Horace Greeley, and went from there to Rome to report on the revolution. When her life ended tragically and prematurely, Emerson wrote, "I have lost my audience." Later he also edited her work to be published as her memoirs.

Whatever we may think of Emerson today, we cannot really know who he was apart from the influence these women had on him. The contribution he made to American literature and liberal religion comes directly from these influences. They inspired his originality. They dared his boldness. They entered the give and take with more to give than they finally took. This Mother's Day seems the right time to remember them.

Women are mothers in more than the family sense. This is not to diminish the incredible feat of giving life to a child or raising one. This is a mystery that is even more awe-inspiring to those of us who have never done it, than to those of you who have. But women's influence extends beyond the work and joy of parenting. There are ways for us to nurture growth in others even if we never have children of our own, or after they have grown up. One way to learn how to do that is to look at women who did.

There is one quality these women share with all mothers. That is the bond of love - as elemental as the bond of the young child and his mother, as we heard in the story for today. Looking at Mary Moody Emerson and Margaret Fuller, we see two women who were close enough to Emerson to affect him deeply.

The foundation of all nurturing relationships is the emotional connection that brings everything else to life. These were women who formed passionate attachments of all kinds. These women were also capable of flaunting convention and even shocking people with their outspoken views. They touched Emerson's imagination through dialogue, correspondence - through give and take. A relationship that allows an open exchange of ideas, with its implicit mutuality and interest in the other, is also essential to nurturing another's growth.

Both Mary Moody Emerson and Margaret Fuller had intellectual lives as vibrant as Emerson's, and he knew it. He learned from them and they learned from him. He grew from the challenge of their ideas.

For Aunt Mary, it was her insistence that he live an authentic, not a derivative, life of the mind and spirit. Throughout his life, he returned to her writings to keep her example fresh before him. "Her wit," Emerson wrote, "is the wild horse of the desert who snuffs the sirocco and scours the palm grove without having learned his paces at the stadium." Mary Moody Emerson nurtured Emerson's creativity by showing him her own. Her openness kept him open too.

Another element of a nurturing relationship is vulnerability. Strong attachment and honest exchange carry with them a certain risk. No one knew that better than Margaret Fuller. She pressed Emerson to acknowledge the depth of their bond.

Their heated letters about love and friendship go back and forth, each of them intensely engaged in the debate. They are achingly honest. Fuller, perhaps, wanted more than Emerson could give her. But each took emotional risks to maintain their friendship and their work together.

This period was one of the most creative in Emerson's life. "Never had Emerson lived so much in the present," Richardson writes, "never had he been less settled in his plans, his home, or his marriage. And never had he been able to sustain such a pace in his writing as well as in his life. ... Emerson's emotional life was remarkably close to the surface as he swept through what he called 'these flying days.'"

Emotional vulnerability nurtures growth of all kinds. These people took interesting risks with each other and the results were enduring. Margaret Fuller went on to experience some of the great political adventures of her time; Emerson stayed home in his study and wrote, each of them indebted to the other.

Lydia Jackson, Emerson's wife, was not a public intellectual, and her thoughts and feelings are not well documented. Everything I have read, however, suggests that she was not threatened by her husband's relationships. And she grew along with him in the challenges they posed. She welcomed Margaret Fuller into her home and joined her in the cause of women's rights and abolition. Richardson notes that Lydia was well ahead of her husband on these issues. She may well have been the one to lead him in the right direction in the end. Emerson had more progressive views on women's rights than many of the men of his day, but he did not use his platform to advance them. He appears not to have made the connection between his personal appreciation and respect for women and the political necessity of women's rights - despite women's efforts to convince him. In this sense, we can say that he took a little more than he gave from the women who loved him.

Perhaps this is a fact every mother knows, that while her progeny thrive, they are not always aware of how much she gave to make it so. To shape a life with love, encouragement, and ideas, to risk one's heart and to help another grow: this is the work of good mothers everywhere. May all good people learn from their work so that the lives of those we love may flourish and grow by our influence.

Reference for this sermon is Emerson: The Mind on Fire, by Robert D. Richardson, Jr., University of California Press, 1995.