A Quick Video Summary of the Week

Sizing-Up the Soul with a Beastly Stare

It is amazing to consider how much earth shattering literature was generated in America between a handful of writers who all knew each other extremely well, visited each other often, and for all extents and purposes were neighbors. Such a thing hasn't happened since and was considerably rare in any happenings before. You might have to go all the way back to the Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley relationships to find anything remotely similar.

Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, & Hawthorne -- all knew each other. (Later on we add brothers William James, the psychologist and Henry James, the novelist into this mix.) With the exception of Whitman, they were all neighbors. Thoreau used to look after little Louise May Alcott from time to time; he house sat for Emerson when he traveled. This group went to weddings together, funerals together, and they advocated for each other's publications.

Whitman was the lone outsider and although his relationship with the Concord transcendentalists would smooth out over time, he earned the rebuke of Emerson early in their relationship by quoting from a private letter Emerson wrote him in the newspaper, and by using an actual quote from that letter on the spine of Leaves of Grass (2nd Edition) without Emerson's permission. A gutsy move and the critics hounded him for it and it nearly cost Whitman any sort of relationship with the Concord writers.

Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau met one time in November of 1856. Amos Bronson Alcott, who I blogged about below, took Thoreau to Whitman in hopes of introducing the two men. Oh to have been a fly on that wall as these two men locked eyes!

Listen to how Bronson Alcott describes the meeting between Whitman and Thoreau in his journal entry:

"I hoped to put him [Walt Whitman] in communication direct with Thoreau, and tried my hand a little after we came down stairs and sat in the parlor below; but each seemed planted fast in reserves, surveying the other curiously, — like two beasts, each wondering what the other would do, whether to snap or run; and it came to no more than cold compliments between them."

Wow, what a description. Alcott's journals don't usually contain much embellishment or over-description, but this particular passage stands out. The meeting must have had quite an impact on Alcott to have described it in such a way. He goes on in the journal entry to wonder if perhaps Walt had met his match, or his equal in the young Thoreau.

Two men in a locked stare, each sizing the other up, neither willing to divulge too much information and so it came to "no more than cold compliments between them." One wonders what each thought of the other. They exchanged not only looks, but books. Walt gave Henry a copy of his 2^nd edition Leaves of Grass.

Three short weeks later, Thoreau had read the entire thing and in this letter to a Unitarian pastor he says:

“That Walt Whitman, of whom I wrote to you, is the most interesting fact to me at the present. I have just read his 2nd edition (which he gave me) and it has done me more good than any reading for a long time… there are 2 or 3 pieces in the book which are disagreeable to say the least, simply sensual. He does not celebrate love at all. It is as if the beasts spoke….

I do not believe that all the sermons so called that have been preached in this land put together are equal to it for preaching… We ought to rejoice greatly in him. He occasionally suggests something a little more than human. Since I have seen him, I find that I am not disturbed by any brag or egoism in his book. He may turn out the least braggart of all, having a better right to be confident.”

Seems as though the old gray poet had quite the effect on Thoreau… six years later Thoreau would die of tuberculosis at the age of 44. We can only speculate what more he would have said about Whitman.

So how exactly did Walt feel about Henry? It would take almost twenty years, but Whitman eventually visited Alcott and Emerson in Concord. In his Specimen Days journal, Whitman would recount visiting Thoreau’s grave and walking the shores of Walden Pond. Whitman, like so many other travelers over time, would place a small stone of remembrance at the cabin site where Thoreau lived during the writing of Walden.

Stones of Remembrance @ Thoreau's Cabin Site
Is one of these stones Whitman's?

 

I think the respect was mutual. And the locked stare between these two alpha male authors was quite real… each sizing up the other, both prepared to acknowledge the human propensity to live as animal and as eternal soul.

 

Of Cages and Cures

"Go build yourself a hut, and there begin

 the grand process of devouring yourself alive.

I see no other alternative, no other hope for you." 

 

~ Ellery Channing to Henry David Thoreau

 

Replica of Thoreau's Cabin

Original Cabin Site on Walden Pond

 

"Self-care" is a term tossed around today in a variety of different ways. As I said in a post below, I am sort inoculated to the term and have no real fondness for it. When you practice self-care, you are generally making an attempt to improve your physical and emotional health, but what that looks like remains up for debate because it varies vastly from person to person.

 

When Thoreau's friend Ellery Channing says "go devour yourself... I see no other hope for you," we are certainly left to wonder if peering through the lens of self-care if this wasn't perhaps some bad advice. Now, we can argue that it worked out alright for Thoreau, tuberculosis aside. But imagine with me that you've just heard a professional counselor give this bit of advice to an intelligent, melancholy man who arrived in his/her office with emotional and intellectual restlessness.

 

Hard to imagine, yes? Go devour yourself? Retreat from human spaces into the cages of your own mind? Isolate yourself to your books and your writing? None of that seems to much like "self-care." The potential to dig oneself deeper into the hole feels completely plausible.

 

One of the reasons I believe a general malaise has fallen across our culture is that we tend to see comfort as a cure rather than a cage. Medication is prescribed to "relieve" the discomfort that we feel, or sometimes that others feel, due to our mental or emotional conditions. The thought of devouring ourselves never really occurs to us and certainly isn't treated as a prescribed course of action.

 

This trip was not only an experience of a lifetime for me, created for me to absorb the thoughts of dead poets and writers in a state of appreciative bliss -- it was also designed to be self-care. Up to this point, I've been trying to blog about my visits (and I have at least two more to do - one on the Poe house and another on the Twain house), but with my trip now complete it seems only fair to address the second half of this blog's title: The Oddities of Self-Care.

 

How is swimming in Walden Pond or reading Leaves of Grass at the tomb of Walt Whitman self-care? In one aspect, I believe my trip has fed my cage just as much as it has fed a cure. Like Thoreau, I often feel as though I have no other choice but to devour myself in musing and writings of great men gone by... in that sense, I've just spent one week feeding my cage.

 

Watching the sun rise while floating on my back in Walden Pond, watching that last star get absorbed in a curtain of light, watching the surface of the lake transform into a canopy of mist heightened by the first rays of sun -- there is no substitute for an experience like that. I was so cold in there, as it was about 55 degrees outside and most of my body was miserable and aching; my wet head jutted upward into the cold mist only heightened the physical discomfort I was feeling. But I didn't want to leave... it certainly felt Divine and I started to wonder if perhaps "there was no other hope for me." I fed the cage and wanted to stay in the woods forever, to turn my back on man and live alone with Nature.

 

On the other hand though, I believe this trip helped to define the kind of pastor I will become. I did leave the pond and will continue leaving a thousand ponds hereafter. The temptation is to believe that I am somehow unique in this regard, but nothing could be further from the truth. All of us have that listless wandering grafted into our souls; all of us look for the tender retreats. We all want a Garden of Eden. Carving out spiritual spaces to swim freely, shameless, and naked before all of God and creation seems not so far fetched a calling. Taking our man-made things, our tendency to hide from both God and ourselves, burying ourselves away in the tombs of our technologies, all of it can often serve as a veil we wear over the deeper parts of who we are and what we were each born to do: to enjoy God and reveal His character, image, and likeness in our own brief lives.

 

I am tempted to list out in bullet form the kinds of things this trip has revealed about me, and I'd like to believe, about all of us as human beings... but I'm not going to. I will blog a bit more and to any who take the time, I think some of that list will appear wedged within the paragraphs. In the meantime though, it will suffice me enough to say that there are many cages and many cures both within our hearts and outside them in popular culture.

 

Sometimes the cures lie at the very bottom of who we are. Sometimes we have to eat our way there; and the sustenance of such a meal is not without cost. But then again, nothing worth having is without cost. And maybe that's the true meaning of self-care.



The Apple Never Falls Too Far From the Tree...

Perhaps the most enjoyable and surprising thing about my visit to the Concord area was the tour of the "Orchard House," which served as the Alcott family home for many years and was the site where Louisa May Alcott wrote the novel "Little Women."

Welcome Sign & Front of Orchard House

I confess to never having taken up with the novel "Little Women." I certainly read it in school, but it didn't stick with me in a way that would motivate a re-reading, although after my tour I may pick it back up. Truthfully, I feel much the same about Hawthorne's work (he was neighbor and friend of the Alcott family to the very end.) I think at the root of it is a general dislike of reading fiction, most especially "realistic" or "historical" fiction. I can deal with fiction that is fantastical or highly imaginative, but reading fiction that basically just mirrors the human condition isn't fun for me. I'd rather go straight to the sources and read non-fiction than peer through that glass darkly.

The tour through the house was packed with non-fiction and I learned a great deal about the Alcott family that I didn't know before entering - that alone was worth the price of admission. The house is very well decorated with both original artifacts of the family as well as original art work by Louise's sister May Alcott. It's an exceptional stop for anyone visiting the Boston/Concord area.

Most curious to me was learning more about Amos Bronson Alcott, Louise's father. Bronson was part of the transcendentalist movement in Concord and close friends with both Emerson and the young Henry David Thoreau. He was mostly a failed writer and educator who chased dreams and ideas which often caused financial hardship on the Alcott family. Louise would lovingly satirize her upbringing much later in life in the book, "Transcendental Wild Oats," which would depict her head-in-the-clouds father and others as being dependent on the women in their life to float off into those heady spaces.

Make no mistake, she loved her father, but Louise May recognized the impracticality of so many philosophical musings which basically failed to put bread on the table. In fact, she was more or less forced to write to help support the family as Bronson's many failures as a provider had left them dependent on the kindness of people like Emerson.

But Bronson fascinates me in two regards - first, was his failed school in Boston, called "Temple School." Bronson's educational strategies were outrageous for the day - he believed children should not be given repetitive work without first having their minds opened. Bronson Alcott would have discussions on the Gospels and ask such questions like "Are the miracles of Jesus literal, or metaphorical?" Teaching students to question at every opportunity, questioning even the most basic "truths" of the day held in Holy Writ got him into loads of hot water. The newspaper was brimming with critics and eventually parents pulled their children out of his school, due in part to all the noise being circulated.

Second, Bronson is a fascinating figure because of the children he fathered: four girls - all of which were highly educated, culturally sensitive, artistic, and productive. He clearly employed his educational strategy at home in the way he raised his kids. Louise May was obviously the most accomplished of the four daughters, but the wealth generated from her books enabled her to get her little sister May the formal art education she'd always dreamed of & truthfully, May was an accomplished artist. Her older sister Anna had both a passion and talent for acting, and while the sister right under her age died young, she was an accomplished piano player. All four girls were strong women, abolitionists, and advocates for women's rights.

I've always believed the greatest life work anyone can leave behind are healthy, productive children. In that regard, Bronson was a huge success no matter how many of his writings failed to garner attention. Bronson also built this:

The Concord School of Philosophy was a summer school that brought in leading intellectuals of the day to teach summer courses in philosophy, art, & history. Although the school only lasted a few short years until Alcott's death, it attracted the likes of Emerson and Thoreau and often utilized a Platonic teaching method of reading and reflection. Bronson was out to change culture by opening up the mind of both young and old alike. He committed his life to this end, despite many financial hardships - quite tenacious I think despite being so "flighty."

That tenacity was an apple that obviously didn't fall too far from the tree as we see so much of it Louise May's life.

I look forward to reading "Record of School" by Elizabeth Peabody which details Bronson Alcott's teaching strategies. Oh and by the way, Elizabeth Peabody? She went on to open the first kindergarten in the United States and pioneered the way for early childhood education, using in part, Bronson's teaching styles.

Author's Ridge at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

 

A beautiful cemetery holding the graves of Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Hawthorne, and many others. The ridge on which the graves are situated is beautiful and the cemetery itself is very easy to navigate. Here's some photos! Finally!

 

The etching is faded and the sun was shining directly on it, but I think you can make out Ralph Waldo Emerson's name. This face plat appears on a giant rock at the top of author's ridge:

 

Emerson, wife, & daughter

Alcott family marker

 

 Louisa May Alcott, author of "Little Women" & much more. I will devote a blog to her specifically very soon, needless to say if you get the chance to visit Concord, don't miss "The Orchard House," which was the Alcott family home for 20 years.

 

 

Henry David Thoreau's grave (top) & family plot (bottom)

 

 

Nathaniel Hawthorne's grave site (directly across from Alcott and Thoreau's)

 

 

 

 

Walden Pond at Dawn

 

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

 

~ Henry David Thoreau

This morning I rose early and was the very first person at Walden Pond. Yesterday I got there early and "did my thing..." (maybe I will tell that story, but maybe not!), but it was probably 6:00 or 6:30 when I found my way yesterday. Today, I wanted to be the FIRST. I arrived at 5:03 AM because the parking doesn't open to visitors until 5:00. Walden Pond was empty.

I strolled down the paved trail to the pond, a green backpack with a towel and dry clothes tossed over one shoulder and a red folding chair tossed over the other. In my right hand was one huge cup of coffee. I made way down to the pond and chose the same place that I picked for yesterday's "expedition" (hehehe) and set up my station.

It was dark as I entered the water. I swam out to the center of the pond and rolled over onto my back. Even though the outside air was 55 degrees, the water temperature was probably in the mid-70's. It was too dark at first to see the fog lifting off the pond until the sun broke.

I parted the water quickly because it was so chilly standing there in the outside air and when I swam out to the middle turned over to float - I could see all the stars. It was simply gorgeous. Within a matter of minutes they started to disappear as the sun rose. As it grew lighter, I noticed how much fog was lifting off the water. Before long visibility dropped to about ten feet if looking straightway in front of you. That was beyond cool though - to be treading water in the center of Walden Pond and guessing which way to swim, looking up too and seeing the last visible star slowly be replaced with a wash of light.

Truthfully, I didn't want to leave. I can see why Thoreau chose to stay - but this Southerner would be gone at the first ice. :)

Walden Pond at dawn this morning. You know you wish you were there!!!

 

 

O Camden, My Camden!

So I am fairly certain I'm not the first person to satirize Whitman's ode to Lincoln, but I gotta say, after seeing Camden I am certain Whitman would be lamenting in a similar fashion. Unfortunately, photography isn't permitted inside the house, but the curators have done an excellent job recreating Whitman's final home just across the river from Philadelphia.

There's just one problem. It sits in the heart of Camden - and I'm not going to mince words here - that particular part of Camden is thug city. When I pulled in for the tour, the entire block was occupied by several hundred black people (no exaggeration, my guess is 300-400 crammed in one city block) who were selling things, jamming to boom boxes, and running around with their pants halfway down their butt cracks. I thought I had stumbled into another million man march (if you never heard me tell this story, remind me to tell you how I ended up in the middle of the Washington rally - actually in the middle of the marching band driving a big white pick-up truck).

Now I believe my record on race relations is solid in this community. People that don't know me can think what they want about the above paragraph and the rest of this post, but you'd be hard pressed to find a person who's advocated for blacks, especially young black men, as hard as I have. This advocacy record stretches beyond the church walls and into the school district and surrounding neighborhoods. In fact, a HUGE portion of my journey this week is attached to paying my respects to men and women that despised racism. I was raised to hate racism by parents who grew up during racist times... they hated it too.

But let me tell you, Camden was BAD. If it wasn't so bad, there wouldn't be six cop cars parked on the city block. I recognize that many people, maybe even some of the hundreds taken to the streets like Egyptians in the middle of "Arab Spring," aren't all thuggin' out in their $300 Lebron sneakers and pants pulled down to their knees. But a bunch on the streets were "thugged" to the max. The victims, the hungry, the elderly, the children... they were probably all at home behind a locked door holding their Bibles and saying a few prayers.

Worse than any of the "pant-dropping thuggery" was the condition of the area, very run down. I can only imagine what that city block would look like if those 400 wandering individuals picked up a broom and dustpan and cleaned it one Saturday morning. Their property values would double in a single day. If they converted those $300 sneakers into paint, their property values would quadruple in a day.

I'm not unsympathetic to poverty, not in the slightest. I know education is a huge factor; and I know that it is hard if you've been raised a certain way. I'm not beyond my feelings on the problem; hence, the lament: "O Camden, My Camden." It was utterly heartbreaking to see. Doubly heartbreaking to know that wedged in between all that chaos is a historical landmark celebrating a man that would have given one of his kidneys to the most broken, run-down alcoholic on the street - no matter what his/her color.

So I probably started a flame war on this one. That's fine. I know there's a ton of good in this area of Camden. It's just was buried under a hundred sagging jeans and gold chains.