"Personal Best, 2008"

READING

Advice on how to live from Henry David Thoreau, in "Walden" published in 1854.

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than [our] unquestionable ability . . . to elevate . . . life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts. Every[one] is tasked to make . . . life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of [our] most elevated and critical hour. . . .

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. . . .

"Still we live meanly, like ants; . . . it is error upon error, and clout upon clout. . . . Our life is frittered away by detail. . . . Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. . . . Simplify, simplify, simplify."

SERMON

Henry David Thoreau’s advice on how to live comes with the authoritative weight of a literary classic, for  'Walden ' is the great guidebook in the annals of American individualism. It is a confident work, inspiring generations of healthy aspirations as well as escapist fantasies. Live intentionally, Thoreau tells us. Experience everything, good and bad, as deeply as you can. Simplify so you can keep your priorities straight.

Despite the immediacy and energy of Thoreau’s writing, however, it was far from spontaneous.  "Walden" took nine years to complete, while he edited and revised his words in seven manuscripts.[1] It was quite an adventure just to get his oddball little work published.

"Walden" is the product of a time when idealistic people – many of them Unitarian – pursued social experiments of all kinds. They sought out the intentional life in Utopian communities such as Brook Farm and Fruitlands. Thoreau was well aware of these undertakings and friends with people involved in them, but he envisioned an experiment on a “smaller scale and from a different direction.”[2] According to historian Jeffrey S. Cramer, Thoreau “was questioning the individual’s role and obligations,” for he believed that to succeed in community, “we must first succeed alone.”[3]

Thoreau spent two years alone in a hand-built cabin on a pond. A talented self-taught naturalist, observations on his relationship to the environment run through his report on what it was like to live there. But mostly it seems that he went to work on himself. He wanted to become his own private Utopia.

Of all the radical ideas that came out of this time in our spiritual history, a faith in our capacity for self-actualization has lasted the longest and the best. Thoreau mined the experience of solitude to sharpen his senses, to wake up to his surroundings, and to empower the moral force within himself. He believed he had everything he needed; what he wanted was to intensify his life, to know it and himself more fully.

Here we are in January 2008, Thoreau’s spiritual descendants. We have a lot on our minds, just as he did. Living in a world full of trouble, taking the time to reflect on ourselves and our lives may seem selfish. Surely one of the world’s troubles is that we are too self-absorbed. And yet, as Thoreau noted, we don’t have much to offer the world until we first know who we are.

For Thoreau this project began with a “conscious endeavor,” as he put it, to awaken to being alive. This is still the best place to start. Something about the way human beings experience time makes it difficult for us to live in the present. We may train for it, as with meditation or yoga, or running. Or we may be drawn to it, through activities that balance concentration and letting go: gardening, perhaps, or painting, or making something with our hands.

More important than how we get there is to give our experience its rightful value. Think about it. We have this life – we know not why – that allows us to be awake in this universe, aware of the fact of our being, each moment an unprecedented opportunity for taking it all in – what a gift, what a mystery, what else matters.

It could be a mystical experience, but it is also a moral one. For when we lose the ability to be conscious, we lose touch with the value of life. We cannot see ourselves as part of something beyond ourselves, with all the responsibilities that connection implies. We react as if we have no bearings. And then we do harm to others and ourselves.

There has been lots of news to give one pause the past couple of weeks, but the report from Kenya is especially troubling. The violence and chaos following the election there have been tragic. According to the "Los Angeles Times," one Kenyan said that he had never planned to kill anyone, and had never killed anyone before. But “I was angry,” he said. “When you are angry, it is easy.”[4]

There are many forces in the world that can overwhelm our moral convictions; it is all too easy to become someone we would not want to be. Though we alone are not responsible for the conditions that threaten our souls, there is always something we can do, on our own, to be conscious of what is at stake. Find a way to make it part of our lives. Then practice it. And pray we can hold on, if we have to, as if nothing else matters.

Thoreau, by the way, may have lived as a recluse, but he wasn’t in denial about what was happening in the world. His writings, including "Walden," address the evil of slavery and the power of putting yourself on the line. “I wanted to live deep,” he writes, “to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world.”

This is just as difficult as it sounds. None of us wants to feel deeply the meanness of life. But what is instructive here is the value of truth and honesty. Thoreau wants the truth of life, nothing less or sugar-coated; and whatever the truth may be, there is dignity in our honest response to it.

I have always loved Vincent Silliman’s words, which I read to open the service this morning. “This day is ours – Its beauty, its promise – Its weight of sorrow and disappointment . . . . May there be laughter in this day, and if there be tears, then generous tears.” There will be laughter and tears; neither will diminish us if we give them our whole selves.

Live deep; drive life into a corner: who has time? We barely skim the surface. Life drives us into corners. Thoreau could see this too. “Our life is frittered away by details,” he writes. “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

Of course it’s easier to simplify if you are a single man with no obligations living in a small cabin with few possessions. Just about everyone I know has a life more complicated than that. Most of us can’t get our work done without multi-tasking phone, driving, email, and everything else. Some of us thrive on it. And even Thoreau complained about how life was “frittered away by detail.”

The fact is that we can’t make our lives simpler by sheer force of will. Yes, we can weed out things we don’t need and live as sustainably as we can. Yes, we can look closely at our priorities and rearrange the list a bit. But most of us can’t simply eliminate what makes life complicated: relationships, work, time, health – we need them, they need us – they are what we are and if they left us, we would miss them. Thoreau himself eventually left his cabin and moved in to live with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s family. That scenario had its own complications.

So what can it mean to simplify, simplify, simplify? The same thing today as it meant in Thoreau’s time, only with more advanced technology. Find a way for simplicity to enter your life, in small but potent steps. Drive somewhere without using your radio or your phone. Spend a quiet afternoon being quiet. Tell the truth. Don’t make things more complicated than they already are.

Two years on Walden Pond produced a meditation that touched on one of the deepest yearnings we human beings have: to experience life as fully as we can. And though much in the world has changed since 1854, especially Walden Pond itself and places like it, our yearnings haven’t changed. Henry David Thoreau tapped into that yearning and came back with timeless and practical advice. There is no “secret.” Only the steady application of the values that keep us in touch with the essential wonder of life that we are on earth to experience. Everything comes from that. And everything returns. At our best, we are grateful for it all.

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1 From “Introduction” to Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition, Jeffrey S. Cramer, editor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. xv.
2 Ibid., p. xvii.
3 From “Paradise (to be) Regained,” quoted in Cramer, p. xvii.
4 Robyn Dixon, ‘First time I ever killed,’ Kenyan says, in the "Los Angeles Times," January 4, 2008, p. A3.