A lecture for the Thoreau Society 2018 Annual Gathering by Rev. Dr. Jim Sherblom adapted from his soon to be released book (September 2018) SPIRITUAL PILGRIM: Awakening Journeys of a Twenty-First century Transcendentalist.  What is a transcendentalist?  Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1842 lecture describing The Transcendentalist said: “As thinkers, [humankind] has been divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves they cannot tell.”  The actual data of our senses represents just a small part of our experiences in life.  So, how do we experience the underlying reality beyond what our senses perceive?  What transcends our senses? Whether you approach Concord from the north, east, south or west, all directions pivot around this place.  Walking, driving, cycling or paddling in Concord as a transcendentalist can be a journey across space and time.  If you come on foot from the north, …

A transcendentalist seeks to transcend the normal experience of life.  With a sense of ultimate reality, the infinitude of our soul is made real through transcendent experiences.  In Concord, nature’s wildness is usually where that happens, but this transcending of ordinary life can occur in all times and all places.  The indigenous people who lived here for millennia also seemed to have a transcendental consciousness.  So how do we seek, and how do we find, this transcendental consciousness? In his lecture “The Transcendentalist” Emerson said, “what is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism.  Idealism as it appears in 1842.  As thinkers, [human]kind has been divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists: the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell.”  So how do we transcend materialism to become mindful idealists?  What is the consciousness we seek?  For Emerson spiritual idealism was simply part of the perennial philosophy, honored in all places and …

 Why do we still not hear the stories of our women ancestors, or ancestors of color, as we do our White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) male ancestors?  Their stories should be told. Concord’s sixth minister, Daniel Bliss (1739 – 1764), was its last Calvinist, Loyalist, and Puritan minister. The times were rapidly changing.  Bliss was, like Jonathon Edwards and George Whitefield, a product of the American Great Awakening.  He preached hellfire and damnation to his often-frightened congregation.  The previous minister, John Whiting (1712 – 1737) was far more liberal, but had apparently been fired for public drunkenness, so he offered alternative worship services at the Black Horse Tavern. His oldest daughter, Phebe Bliss, lived through Concord’s greatest time of transformations.  Born in 1741, she grew up in a British colonial town, loyal to God, King and Country.  She was only 23 when her father died young (age 49) leaving she and her mother and two younger sisters scrambling to make ends meet.  Concord turned to William Emerson, age 22 and a direct descendent of Concord’s founding …

  It is hard to know many of the details of the lives of early enslaved African Americans in Concord, Massachusetts because they were, like white women and children, treated as property rather than as citizens of early Concord.  In the seventeenth century Concord was a subsistence farming community, so college educated intellectuals, such as ministers, lawyers, or doctors, appear to have often relied upon enslaved workers to maintain their households and farms.  But they didn’t tend to leave posterity their names or life details. Concord’s founding minister, the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, and some subsequent First Parish in Concord ministers prior to the American Revolution, appear to have kept slaves at least some of the time.  The church record books include occasional references to enslaved members, but like white women and children, they were seated separately, and were not counted as full or paying members at the time. The first previously enslaved African American to buy land in Concord was John Jack, born 1712, who built his homestead on swampland near the edge of Great …

My family heritage is about fifty percent White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) New Englanders with most of the rest being descended from Swedish immigrants who moved to Worcester in the late nineteenth century to work in the precision tool industry. I am descended from the pilgrim John Alden, who helped to pacify and destroy the indigenous people of Cape Cod.  But I am also descended from the Marlboro farmer Abner Goodale who fought with the rebels at Concord’s Old North Bridge on April 19, 1775.  And also, the WASP loyalist Peter Collicutt, who defending king and country fled to Canada during the American revolution.  It is important we know the histories and heritage of our place in this world. In the late 1620’s the Musketaquid river valley, where Concord would be founded, were open and idyllic pastures and farmlands previously cultivated by a tribe of the Massachusetts indigenous people.  It was twenty miles through the deep dark forest to the nearest settled WASP town, but there were remnants of the indigenous people living in this area …

For millennia indigenous people traveled long distances through the forest to live seasonally in Musketaquid.  After spring planting many tribes often summered along the Atlantic coast with its bountiful fish, clams and lobster.  It was a life in tune with nature and their environment. In the early sixteenth century they began interacting with English fishermen and explorers. The indigenous people would trade with them along the shore then travel back up what we call the Merrimack and Concord rivers to Musketaquid, at the confluence of three rivers, in time for the late summer harvest.  The coming of the English and French explorers destroyed their world. Members of the indigenous tribes in this area that became Concord numbered in the tens of thousands.  However, after European contact, a plague broke out among the indigenous people decimating their numbers.  By the 1630’s European plagues and diseases, and warfare with some of the English settlers, had reduced their numbers over 90% to a few hundred indigenous people. In the early 1630’s William Wood was an English explorer, adventurer, …

I was doing my walking meditation around Walden Pond one day this past winter when I came upon a  park ranger who is a friend of mine.  She asked me what do I say when asked if there are any transcendentalists living in Concord today?  I said I’m one.  Thus began a conversation that resulted in my giving a forty five minute talk on being transcendentalist today at the new Walden Pond Visitor’s Center on the Sunday afternoon of April school vacation week.   Here is the link to that talk if you are interested in how a modern transcendentalist engages Concord’s wildness. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i6u4oHbs4itkl-G74L-Qzp7FCXEIhksA/view

Traveling in the high Himalayas is as remarkable for what is seen as for what remains unseen.  This is a magical and obscure place which continually challenges one’s faith and imagination. After a few days spent exploring around Kathmandu our bus ascends the switchback trails, clinging to the mountainside, and semi-paved roadway, to rise in elevation nearly a mile above the valley to Club Himalaya Nagarkot in the Bhaktapur district. I’ve come to experience the mountain sunrise so have requested a guest room with a large glass sliding door looking out onto a small balcony facing due east.  We look down upon the small ravine in which this village sits, and across the expansive Kathmandu valley beyond to the Himalayan mountain range in the far distance. That night there is rain and lightning on the mountains so I now have limited expectations for the coming of the dawn.  But I leave the curtains and the glass slide open for first light. The morning birds begin to sing just after 5:15 am when it still dark.  …