Earth-Centered Traditions
Lesson 4: Transcendentalism and UU Connection to Nature
10.5.2014
Objectives: Learning about Transcendentalism’s connection to nature and UU faith.
Materials: “Excerpts from Walking” by Thoreau, bell
Time allotments are suggested and meant to be adapted.
1. Nametags and Graffiti Wall (before class begins):
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For anyone needing, make nametags using blank paper, markers, and holders. Youth
can create their own unique but LEGIBLE nametag. Make it a regular practice to wear
nametags.
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“Graffiti Wall” questions: Write the following on whiteboard. Invite youth as they
arrive to grab a marker and weigh in with their responses:
a. What does your family do on snowy days?
b. Do you have a favorite campsite somewhere?
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Teachers complete attendance sheets.
2. Chalice Lighting: Light the chalice, saying these words together: “We light this chalice as
a symbol of our faith. We seek the light of truth and share in the warmth of love.”
Teacher reads: (from Henry David Thoreau) “Nature is full of genius, full of divinity; so
that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”
3. Joys and Sorrows (10 minutes): Listening is a precious gift that we offer one another at
church. Using the balance scale and the blue (sorrows) and yellow (joys) stones, invite
youth to share a joy and/or a sorrow from the past week, as a way of meeting one
another with our lives and sharing in community. You will want to set limits (e.g. two
stones max per person) so that no one monopolizes sharing time.
Each Sunday, a copy of the congregation’s Embracing Meditation will be made available
to your class, so that stones can be put in for those whose names are being spoken in the
Sanctuary.
4. Transcendentalism and its influence on Unitarian Universalism (10 minutes)
Teacher summarizes these four points:
a. Unitarian Universalism is seen by many as an earth-centered tradition. In many Credo
statements of faith delivered by Unity’s Coming of Age youth, teenagers frequently
speak of the Boundary Waters as the holiest place they know; or that while they are
uncertain about what/who God might be, they are certain of what nature is and
means to them.
b. Where did our sense of nature as Holy come from? Certainly, we have a respect for
native and pagan traditions, but our ideas about nature come primarily from the
Transcendentalists, a group of thinkers from New England who created an alternate
path for Unitarians and Universalists outside traditional Christianity.
c. Transcendentalists include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret
Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Elizabeth Peabody. Most high schools require
reading their essays for English and history classes.
d. Among Transcendentalists’ core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state that “transcends”
the physical and empirical, and is only realized through the individual’s natural
intuition rather than through the doctrines of established religions. In nature, we can
best reconnect with the sacred divine within each of us.
5. Go Outside: Agree or Disagree Activity (20 minutes)
Meet outside near the garden/green space. Divide a stretch of ground into two halves,
designated as “Agree” and “Disagree.” Read aloud some of these statements from
Emerson’s essay Nature and see if the class agrees or disagrees with our
Transcendentalist forbear. They have to stand and move to the side that reflects their
own beliefs. Give time for youth to explain their choices.
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Nature is best experienced alone. Other people get in the way of your noticing
things and finding peace.
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Nature was designed for human beings.
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Industry complements nature. It’s good for people to make use of the earth’s
resources like wood, water, coal, etc.
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Anything natural is good.
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Anything natural is beautiful.
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Cities are nasty. They oppress the human spirit.
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Every single event in the natural world has a spiritual lesson to teach us.
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The only worthwhile similes and metaphors for poetry and language come from
nature.
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Nothing in nature is inherently evil.
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If a person looks closely enough, he or she will see God in nature.
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Nature, taken as a whole, is God.
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The world’s real religion will eventually be grounded in nature because everyone has
the experience of nature in common.
6. Outdoor Meditation walk (20 minutes)
Read excerpts from “Walking” aloud (attached), perhaps dividing the reading between
teachers and youths. Instruct them individually to go for a really slow, quiet walk in which
their spirit and body comes awake to the natural world. Encourage them to stay within
the green space, pay attention to their surroundings, and simply remain alert to the
world around them. They should walk slowly, silently and avoid getting into any
conversation. No cell phones/iPods/distractions.
Inform them that you will ring a bell when there are 5 minutes left, so they can gather
back in a circle. Ring the bell again to end the walk.
When you gather, invite youth to reflect on the act of walking in nature as a spiritual
practice.
7. Say goodbye until next time: Extinguish the chalice, saying together:
“May the light of truth and the warmth of love go with us in our hearts.”
8. Help clean up classroom before leaving: Please keep regular practice of readying
classroom for the next class.
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leave lesson plan and all materials organized
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return blue/yellow stones to containers
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wipe the whiteboard clean
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tables and chairs neatly returned
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nametags collected in Ziploc bag
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leave any comments for RE staff on attendance sheets
Excerpts from Walking [1862]
Henry David Thoreau
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of
Walking, that is, of taking walks. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the
spirit of undying adventure, never to return. If you are ready to leave father and mother,
and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again—if you
have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man,
then you are ready for a walk.
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at
least,—and it is commonly more than that,—sauntering through the woods and over the
hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny
for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the
mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the
afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them—as if the legs were made to sit
upon, and not to stand or walk upon—I think that they deserve some credit for not having
all committed suicide long ago. How womankind, who are confined to the house still more
than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not
stand it at all.
You must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when
walking.
When a traveller asked Wordsworth’s servant to show him her master’s study, she
answered, “Here is his library, but his study is out of doors.”
[When we walk,] there will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts.
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us if we
walked only in a garden or a mall? Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if
they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the
woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would rather forget all
my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I
cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am
not where my body is—I am out of my senses. In my walks I would rather return to my
senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I
suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder, when I find myself so implicated even in what
are called good works—for this may sometimes happen.
I walk out into a Nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer,
walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Vespucius, nor
Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in mythology
than in any history of America, so called, that I have seen.
I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. We
require an infusion of hemlock-spruce or arbor-vitæ in our tea. There are some intervals
which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to which I would migrate,—wild lands where no
settler has squatted; to which, methinks, I am already acclimated.
Ben Jonson exclaims,—“How near to good is what is fair [beautiful!]”
So I would say—How near to good is what is wild!
Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its
presence refreshes him.
To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or
resort to. So it is with man. In short, all good things are wild and free.. Give me for my friends
and neighbors wild men, not tame ones.
Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who
loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.
So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever
he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives
with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.