I used to mistake transcendentalism for superstition.
Transcendentalism was a religion, right? Unpersuaded by my parents’ creed, I was opposed to all. Transcendentalists spied God everywhere, what did that mean? Here was here, now was now, and that was that. To hell with religion and its mumbo-jumbo.
The other day, having slept well, I woke to my mistake. I was sipping my coffee, nibbling breakfast cake, gazing out at the field. Three deer were grazing, which I hoped Henry wouldn’t notice, lest he turn noisy. Henry views himself as defender of our domain. The nerve of these creatures, eating his grass! Henry doesn’t eat grass – not much anyway – there’s plenty to go around, but it’s the principle of the thing. He will be master here, safeguarding Jane and me, or perish in the attempt!
Beautiful these deer in the dewy dawn – who could deny it? – sauntering and bending with balletic grace – peaceable and perfect from this distance. Beauty depends on distance, being close enough to see but not too close. A cloud, shapely from afar, turns blur if entered.
Emerson, Thoreau, and their transcendentalist pals would have discerned in these exquisite deer evidence of God’s ubiquity. So did I if – if by God one meant the unfathomable wonder of being. If by God one meant an omnipotent manufacturer and tinkerer with earthly destinies, God as supervisor and magistrate, as coach calling the shots, that was rubbish. If God’s micromanaging earth, He should be fired – witness any day’s headlines.
Every religion acknowledges the unfathomable wonder of being in its own way. No sensible soul knows for sure why we were born or how we should lead our lives. Who can adequately explain eruptions of joy or sackings by despair? Is love simply chemistry to prolong the species? Is beauty a molecular reaction and nothing more?
No thinking person thinks this. Yet humans ferociously subdivide and battle in defense of their divinities. Not perceptions, but definitions separate us. We reason our way to hostility, too smart, it turns out, for our own good.
The Transcendentalists – and various sages before them – got it right. God is everywhere: just look. And what you make of God is up to you. Rely on your own perception, no official definition. Cleave to a creed if you like – each has its charm – but forsake it if you’ve a mind to and arrange your own. To forswear allegiance to a sect – Christian, Muslim, Jewish, any – is not to disown God. God precedes religion – for God is all we can never know. Each religion presents God differently, but all are portraying the same unfathomable mystery.
Emerson, walking in the woods as a young man, happened on a rhododendron (or rhodora) blooming. For whom, he wondered – for no human eyes but his would see it and his only by happenstance. “Rhodora!” he apostrophized the shrub, no doubt surprised by this effusion,
if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.
Our ignorance is endless, so quit trying to outrun it. However far our minds venture, an infinitude stretches beyond. Rejoice in all you’ll never know for it keeps the world fresh!
So preach those three deer in the field, whom Henry has yet to glimpse.