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Archive
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| Transcending the World: Now and Then |
| September 29, 2022 |
We learn how creating space for people to sing outdoors is his spiritual calling. Then we explore the beliefs of the 19th-century Transcendentalists. |
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| “We Drop Out of Our Egocentric Ways of Thinking” |
September 29, 2022 |
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In this non-narrated reflection from musician Craig Green, we learn why creating space for people to sing outdoors is his spiritual calling. Green, the founder of a Virginia-based community singing group, invites people to gather outside and discover the power of experiencing their voices resonating with the sounds of nature. Having discovered Thoreau as a teenager, Green explains why he lives in intentional communities and his spiritual journey. Green is one of the growing number of Americans identifying as “spiritual but not religious.” But he cautions against assuming his spiritual identity means he is a loner. Quite the contrary – he is trying to find through his music “a beloved community in which people feel like they can be completely themselves and also be encouraging other people to be completely who they are and, finding our voices and our truth together.”
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| The God Within |
September 29, 2022 |
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Dr. Robert Gross outlines the often confounding basics of Transcendentalism and shows why they were extraordinary in 19th-century America. He argues that Emerson and other Transcendentalists took what was a relatively obscure German philosophy and gave it an American spin – “What the Transcendentalists do that I think is American is they infuse their vision of the God within with a commitment to democracy and egalitarianism,” Gross says. “The moment you accept that each individual has something in him or her that is divine, that’s the moment all hierarchies, all tyrannies topple.”
Dr. Gross shows how Emerson taught the tenets of Transcendentalism, but Henry David Thoreau – another Concordian – lived it. In moving to Walden Pond on the town’s outskirts, he ignited both American environmentalism and a lived, experiential spirituality conducted out-of-doors still present and thriving today.
Robert A. Gross, Ph.D. Draper Professor of American History, Emeritus, University of Connecticut. Author of many books including The Transcendentalists and Their World, and The Minutemen and Their World.
Dr. Robert A. Gross, Ph.D.
The Transcendentalists and Their World
Macmillan
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