Who was the God of American poet, philosopher, and proto-environmentalist Henry David Thoreau? The word ‘God’ appears more than 250 times in his monumental Journals, but what does this really tell us? As with all conceptions of divinity, Thoreau’s God was complex, as difficult to categorize as the boundless Concordian himself. Richard Higgins, a former staff writer at the Boston Globe and the author of Thoreau and the Language of Trees, takes on the task of perusing through the great timberland of Thoreau’s writing, less to make the case for a definitive angle of identity but to fashion compelling Thoreauvian perspectives, even meditations, on the question. Higgins argues that “perception of and attention to the sacred” lies at the heart of this inquiry, that “seeing the soul, or anima, in everything”—cloud, pencil, person—the religious acting from care and concern for life, constitutes the bedrock of Thoreau’s devotion to this God. In essence, Thoreau took the caritas of the New Testament and radiated it outwards, almost as a revision of traditional, nineteenth-century Christianity, to include all of earthly creation. At the non-circumferential non-center of his belief system sits God himself, “the Ineffable,” “Universal Intelligence,” “Great Mower,” “the great artist,” and “Benefactor,” names that, for Thoreau, could be easily dismissed as thin anthropomorphic notions of divinity. Very fine to know the Latin name of the leaf trembling before one in an autumn breeze, he would say; infinitely better to partake of its golden color shining forth as celebration and reflection of the light illuminating it. This interview took place over email and has been edited for clarity.
Ryan Asmussen
How can we rescue Thoreau from the adjective ‘spiritual’? You make a fine case against this vague label in Thoreau’s God. How can we begin to think of him in relation to nature and the transcendent?
Richard Higgins
Well, I’m not trying to rescue Thoreau from that label, only trying to show that he was more than vaguely or loosely spiritual as is sometimes suggested by the popular idiom, “spiritual but not religious.” Religion and spirituality are not contrary. To be religious is necessarily to be spiritual. So Thoreau was spiritual, but he also had a worldview that historians of religion would see as characteristically religious—his profound sense of the sacred and profane, his sense of being related to a source of life greater than himself and his drawing on historical faith traditions, both East and West, in forming his religious sensibility. You might add his deep sense of reverence, his faithfulness to his iconoclastic theological vision and his discipline of living by the dictates of his soul.
Ryan Asmussen
As to the man himself, we have reports of his character and personality from several of his friends and fellow Concordians. What was Thoreau like as an individual? What was it like to know him?
Richard Higgins
By all accounts he was one intense guy. His prickly, judgmental and arrogant side is by far better known, but Thoreau was also intensely loyal to his family and friends, had a hilarious sense of humor, loved music, loved children, and he simply enjoyed life more than most of us manage to do. He saw hypocrisy in the well-off and well-connected, but he loved to talk to farmers and average people. When he died, Concord cancelled school and hundreds of children bearing flowers followed his cortege to his grave. That speaks volumes about his real personality.
Ryan Asmussen
Let’s address his Christianity… or lack thereof. Born into a Christian milieu, he was a regular reader of the Bible, yet he wasn’t what you would call a devoted parishioner.
Richard Higgins
No, not even a lackluster parishioner. Thoreau valued the Christian ideal as conveyed in the New Testament, but he thought the church in his day completely failed to embody it. I mean, the churches in Concord had to be roused against slavery and only lately came round to support abolition. As I say in the book, Thoreau left the meetinghouse not because it represented religion, but because it failed to. He was particularly harsh about its sectarianism, its emphasis on sin and the need for redemption, its disconnection from nature, and its focus on a revelation 2000 years ago, rather than today. But he was stamped by his Puritan heritage and its belief in a creator God, and he never completely gave up on the ideal of Christianity.
Ryan Asmussen
More and more, apart from his masterwork Walden, readers and critics aver that Thoreau’s true work of genius is his almost-two-million-word Journal. Would you agree?
Richard Higgins
Absolutely. The gemlike prose that he carved into it each day, writing fast and with little revision, is astounding. He used dashes instead of punctuation to get his keen observations and spontaneous insights down as quickly as possible. Then he would often weave in cultural and political commentary, history, natural science, the classics and extended wordplay in a way that makes you admire his erudition and skill as a literary stylist. He also had an amazing memory that, with the assistance of a few penciled field notes he took on his daily walks, allowed him to reconstruct the previous day’s experience, in the present tense, and in incredible detail, the following morning.
Ryan Asmussen
Would you talk about his notion of reverence? In the book you include a wonderful quote from Alfred North Whitehead to give us some background on this idea: “The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.” Why was ‘revering’ life so vital to Thoreau’s life and work?
Richard Higgins
Whitehead is zeroing in on the idea of the Eternal Now, the sacred in the present moment, which was indeed a foundation of Thoreau’s reverence. Thoreau lived briefly as a college student with Orestes Bronson, a fiery Unitarian minister who taught that matter and spirit were one. Thoreau absorbed and developed that belief, to the extent that, as a naturalist, studying natural facts became an act of contemplation and devotion. Thoreau had a fundamental reverence for the holiness of life. He said he seized every opportunity to “wonder and worship” as a flower receives the light. “The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day,” he wrote, “the more expanded and immortal I become.”
Ryan Asmussen
My favorite aspect of his writing is his insistence on, and devotion to, the act of seeing. As you call it, his “habit of attention.” We could also call it mindfulness, but not so much metacognitively but directed outward, on the ‘things of this world.’ You write that this habit involves “intention.” Would you explain?
Richard Higgins
Thoreau’s religious experience was rooted in direct, unmediated perception, in seeing the holy in the ordinary. This is not a matter of just glancing around and seeing things in a preconceived way, as we typically do. You have to look in order to see, he believed. For Thoreau, intention, expectation and a desire to see, disclosed the sacred dimension of reality. Those habits enable us to be “awake,” rather than to sleepwalk through life, which is a central theme of Walden. And it is certainly in line with what we think of us “mindfulness” today.
Ryan Asmussen
One of the trickier questions to deal with when considering what God, or kind of God, Thoreau held most faith in, is the question of pantheism: the belief that nature is God, that the universe is divinity. To put it, I hope, fairly, he often writes in that spirit. Why should we, in the end, refuse that label for him?
Richard Higgins
It’s tricky because Thoreau supplies ample justification to different views of this question, so I have a chapter in the book on it. I think he expressed pantheist views at times, describing a natural world aflame with spirit, or referring, for example, to worshipping stones, but his consistently stated view is that Walden Pond and the fish in it—as well as trees, wildflowers, rainbows, and other natural objects—are images or emanations of God, rather than divine in and of themselves. Thoreau often represents God and nature and ontologically distinct, which is inconsistent with pantheism.
Ryan Asmussen
In his 1855 Journal, he wrote, “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” Thoreau’s God is your second book on the man. Has H. D. T. been a path like this for you?
Richard Higgins
The Puritans had “awakeners” or deacons who went around with a long rod during worship poking or tapping parishioners who were perceived to have fallen asleep. Well, while writing the book sometimes I would have preferred to be prodded by such a deacon than to be constantly made aware by Thoreau of how much further I have to go along the spiritual path. I mean his devotion to pursuing a higher life was truly extraordinary. But more often I was inspired by it. I share Thoreau’s awareness of the mystical dimension of the divine, that we can’t fit God into a theological shoebox. Religion ended up being a deep personal and emotional commitment for Thoreau, rather assent to this or that proposition, as it is for me. So overall I take him as a spiritual teacher, a kind of ideal to aspire to. Which is appropriate, because Thoreau’s faith was all about aspiration to a higher stage of spiritual development.
NONFICTION
Thoreau’s God
by Richard Higgins
The University of Chicago Press
Published October 8th, 2024
