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Copyright 2005 Rev. Amy B. Freedman Thoreau as Spiritual Guide Rev.
Amy B. Freedman "Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star." -Henry David Thoreau RESPONSIVE READING #660, To Live Deliberately, Henry David Thoreau READING from Walden by Henry David Thoreau Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome by drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. 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 the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his 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 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 arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done. REFLECTION- Rev. Amy Bowden Freedman This morning's readings are excerpts from Walden by Henry David Thoreau. For those of you who have never read Walden, I highly recommend that you put it on your summer reading list! For those of you who have read it, you know that it is a book that you can return to like an old friend for wisdom and inspiration. I recently reread it myself. It contains some insights that are important for us to consider as we prepare for the Summer months. Several people have commented to me lately that time is flying by at
an alarming rate. Just this past week a friend of mine exclaimed "I
can't believe that Summer is almost over already!" I reminded her,
and I would like to remind all of you, that Summer is not almost over,
in fact, it has not yet begun! June 21st marks the official end of Spring
and beginning of the Summer season. Not many of us make the choices that Henry David Thoreau made through
out his life in casting aside convention and common expectations. He resigned
from his post as schoolmaster when the Concord school board insisted he
follow the proscribed textbook and he refused to use corporal punishment
to discipline the students. He was jailed for refusing to pay taxes. He
observed that although we work in order to live, many people seemed to
be enslaved by their work. He built a cabin on Walden Pond as an experiment
in simple living. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. 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. --- There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or the hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and summachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than the work of my hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. REFLECTION- Rev. Amy Bowden Freedman How many rooms do you have in your house? How many chairs? How many toys? How many objects that have no use at all but simply gather dust? Thoreau built his cabin on Walden Pond with his own hands. He was inspired to create a space that provided shelter from the elements, a place to sleep, to read, to write, and to prepare food. Before this experiment in living, he looked around at the other houses in Concord, MA where he lived. He noticed that many people had many more rooms than they needed. In comparison, he looked at the Penobscot Indians who lived in tents of cotton cloth. He felt that the Native Americans had the far richer lifestyle than the farmer who was enslaved to his land working by the sweat of his brow from sunrise to sunset. Thoreau built his cabin and planted and fished in order to sustain himself. He had three chairs in his house; "one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society." Thoreau had a piece of limestone on his desk. However, he noticed that he needed to dust the stone daily so he tossed it outdoors. Thoreau felt his time could be better spent dusting off his own thoughts. Thoreau would be amazed to see how consumption has become an even greater problem in this country. Have you seen the show "Clean Sweep"? A team of designers and professional organizers sweep in to work on one or two rooms of a home. The rooms are a mess! Often people have not bothered to dust for a long time. The room is so filled with stuff that there is hardly a path to move from one end to the next. The owners have become so haphazard in the choices they've made, that there is almost no room to live! Thoreau's words echo through the ages: "Simplicity! Simplicity! Simplicity!" Instead of filling our lives with stuff, we need to make room for life. Take the time to really see what items you use and enjoy and what objects perhaps you could do without. Our needs are not met through the consumption of more and better possessions, our lives are enriched by caring for what we have and sharing what is of value with others. On this earth, we need to be more mindful of the amount of materials that we consume. Americans consume far more than any other citizens on this earth. We need to live simply so that others can simply live. Living with less is in fact a way to live more generous, expansive lives. Listen to the conclusion to Walden in which Thoreau sums up his experience:
"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that is one adventures
confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the
life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in
common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary;
new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves
around and within his; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in
his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of
a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the
laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be
solitude, nor poverty, poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built
castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should
be. Now put foundations under them." Get a life. A real life, Blessed Be. |