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| Gracie Binoya has captured the spirit of the Pasque Flower, the mountain harbinger of Spring. |
In our little Presbyterian Community Church we spent Saturday evening preparing for a pancake feed and potluck for the morning. Anticipating one of the two largest days of attendance of the year--Christmas is the leading contender--we know that at some level, even the most cynical mountain resident recognizes the symbolic, archetypal power of this unique Christian holiday (Holy Day).
Absorbing the pull of the cycles of Nature, I find my thoughts turning--with no conscious will from me--to the spiritual gravity of these earth forces. Last year I found a jewel of a book, illustrated with watercolor paintings, at the Yellowstone Association bookstore in Jackson Hole. The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Walt MacLaughlin.
Imagine my surprise to see the opening paragraphs.
Emerson studied divinity at Harvard College. In 1829, he became pastor of the Second Church in Boston. He married the young, beautiful Ellen Tucker a few months later, and lived for two years what appeared to be a perfectly normal life. Then Ellen died of tuberculosis. That tragic event sparked a spiritual crisis in Emerson. An ember that had been smoldering within him since his college days suddenly burst into flame. And before another year passed, Emerson was rethinking his vocation, his beliefs, everything.
In the summer of 1832...he retreated into the White Mountains of New Hampshire to collect his thoughts. When he returned to Boston, he resigned his ministry.
We know of course that Ralph Waldo Emerson went on to become a Naturalist, a philosopher, a leading voice in the understanding of the transcendental potential of encounters with the natural world.
I stop and I pause, in seeing these words so clearly and simply spoken. He left his vocation in the ministry to pursue a spiritual awakening.
Is there a more potent example of the distance between the two worlds?
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