A Spiritual Journey through Literature: How Austen, Bronte, Thoreau and Whitman Shaped My Sense of Self, My Religious Practice, and My Place in a Spiritual World by Leslie Thompson A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Ogden, Utah April 9,2014 Approved Dr.flohn Schwiebert, Committee Chair X //? y/jp Dr. Sian s, Committee Member ames Youn Thompson | 27 A Spiritual Journey through Literature: How Austen, Bronte, Thoreau and Whitman Shaped My Sense of Self, My Religious Practice, and My Place in a Spiritual World Table of Contents Introduction 3 Prologue 9 Chapter One: Sufficient in Experience, Reading Jane Austen 13 Interlude: Terry Tempest Williams 33 Chapter Two: Religion v. Soul, Reading Walt Whitman 35 Interlude: F. Scott Fitzgerald 53 Chapter Three: Live on Purpose with Purpose, Reading Henry David Thoreau 59 Interlude: Kate Chopin 73 Chapter Four: Trust Your Gut, Reading Charlotte Bronte 79 Conclusion 101 Works Cited 103 Works Consulted 106 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature Introduction Thompson | 27 "I think English is something you have to sell," said the vice principal interviewing me as I applied for a high school teaching job. "So, how would you sell it?" I didn't disagree with him; I still don't -1 often find myself selling my discipline to my students, their parents, and people who ask me what I do for a living. My answer is usually broad and impassioned - about the importance of discovery and perspective, of building a vocabulary that encourages empathy and self-advocacy, of the creative, personal relationship that is fostered between the reader and the text - a relationship that I believe is unique to this particular medium because it mostly occurs internally and the internal evolution of character is our most significant purpose. And when it comes to the specific student, English sells when he or she finds the right book at the right moment. In a recent article about education spending, the Salt Lake Tribune reported, "Howard Stephenson... chairman of the Senate Education Committee, has contended that the state is wasting billions of dollars conferring 'degrees to nowhere' on college students because higher education is badly misaligned with the workforce." Charter schools emphasizing math and science are budding exponentially, and any review of daily news reveals the current pulse of the nation regarding education: an education is only valuable if its immediate result is eligibility for a high earning job. With this educational pulse - toward job training over philosophy and art, I find myself justifying my courses and curriculum even more. Many school districts misinterpret the purpose of studying Language Arts and are replacing classic literature and modern literary greats with trade manuals and science texts - and while I certainly believe in the importance of basic reading comprehension and the value of science and 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature exploration, this sort of focused, limited, approach is detrimental to the development of our children and ourselves. With the decline in liberal arts studies and the constant refrain of "useless" degrees, scholars and advocates are writing extensively about the issue, arguing with eloquence that too often goes unheard, on behalf of a broad, liberal arts education. And so, that is not my purpose here. The debate, however, does frame the purpose of this project. Because at its core, and for all of the reasons to promote an engaged and varied reading experience among our society, at its heart, reading is private and personal and can gradually transform us. And I believe in the necessity of personal, individual transformation. I was raised in a religious household, for which experience I will always be grateful. I grew up believing in a loving God and a specific purpose to my life; I grew up believing that my family was an eternal unit and we were meant to be together. This upbringing grounded me and provided me with a sense of security and belonging that is still fundamental to how I see myself and my world. But over the last couple of years, questions, concerns, beliefs - those nagging pulses that had been tapping at the edges of my brain and subtly twisting at my heart - came so much to the forefront of my consciousness that I was forced to shift the structure of my belief. This project is not about why religion is wrong and philosophy is right any more than it's about why science and technology are bad and reading and art are good. Instead, it is about the gradual evolution of character that occurs when we begin to reconcile our multitude of experience - and how reading fosters that reconciliation. This kind of reading can foster religious practice, if that is a person's objective. It will certainly improve the quality of our science and technology exploration and application. This kind Thompson | 27 of character evolution promotes a strong and equitable society - and yet, it is primarily internal. Because reading is deeply personal, in this piece, I've woven personal narrative vignettes with texts that have been particularly meaningful to me. I do not propose that these are the texts that have been or will be most significant for another reader, or another person's particular spiritual evolution, although I do present evidence through both anecdotes and scholarship that I am not unique in using these writers as guides for shaping my beliefs. However, each reader, each person on a particular path of some kind of self-awareness, will develop her or his own sort of canon of personal philosophy, his or her own combination of texts and experiences that shifted and shaped her character. Each chapter focuses on a particular writer. When I considered those nagging questions at the back of my mind and the more specific shift in spiritual beliefs, these were the writers who stood out most clearly as being particularly significant. I have framed the project with two writers I began to adore as a pre-pubescent teen: Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. Jane Austen was a household name and frequently quoted as I grew up. My chapter on Austen is more about this particular family connection than an obvious shift in spiritual perspective, but I chose to start with her because the entirety of my spiritual journey is predicated on my connected relationship between my family and literature. With the Austen chapter, I defend her popularity and her significance while discussing the connection of her works with my own family relationships - particularly the one with my sister - because spirituality is deeply connected to our relationships and our perception of them and because Austen helps me appreciate that connection. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature I conclude the project with a chapter on Charlotte Bronte, particularly her novel Jane Eyre, because this book has altered and adjusted its meaning and relevance with each reading, and it feels like it has grown up with me more than any other work. I have read this novel almost every other year since I was twelve years old and each time, Jane has taught me something different. The conclusion of my project is my latest interpretation of her story as it not only applies to my particular perspective shift, but as it has aided that adjustment. The middle two chapters concern writers who have only recently become significant to me: Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. I read excerpts of their works in high school and probably in college as well, but aside from knowing their names and a few token lessons in my own instruction when I became a teacher, I remained untouched, really, by their words. Until I needed them. And when I was ready or those words became necessary, it was like discovering strawberries for the first time - delicious, healthy treats that somehow enhanced the flavor and significance of whatever they were paired with. It is not lost on me that both of these writers come from an era of American religious rebirth, or that their lives and writings coincide with the birth of the religion I was raised to believe contained the whole truth and the correct path to salvation. Nor is it surprising that it was only when I was willing to openly and honestly question the legitimacy of the claims of my upbringing that these writers held significant meaning for my personal philosophy. Because I have less experience with these writers, my chapters about them tend to be a bit more worshipful and less critical than they might be if I were to write them in, say, five years. Right now, the didactic nature of their language; the sheer confidence of their delivery, is necessary to me; I do not purport to exchange one religion for another, but I need the brash confidence to counter my own Thompson | 27 cautious steps into a philosophy that is becoming less and less centered in "knowing the truth" and more and more focused on the possibility that when it comes to spiritual matters, "knowing" is subjective and "truth" is about interpretation. Each chapter parallels the writer's life, interpretations of her or his work, and some discussion about the influence and effect of that work with personal, specific scenes and experiences. My personal experiences do not coincide in a neat time line with the reading and interpretation of the works or the biographies of the writers; rather in understanding and considering the writers and their works, the significance of various scenes became clearer. In between each chapter, I've included brief interludes - short, specific experiences texts that have collectively added to my understanding of what it means to be a spiritual person and imply how literature is guiding that understanding. The collection is quite canonical. This was somewhat accidental -1 have spent a great deal of my teaching career promoting modern young adult literature and encouraging students and fellow teachers to include more varieties and perspectives in their literature selections. And my friends and family will be surprised that there is not at least one chapter devoted to romance novels—my go-to genre for a quick escape, a happy pick-me-up, and an inspirational sense of possibility. But when I thought of which works most clearly shaped and shifted my recent spiritual adjustment, the works presented in the following pages were uppermost in my mind. C.S. Lewis said, "We read to know we are not alone." The quote hangs on many a classroom wall and provides the simplest justification for reading. Once we take away the rhetoric of the discussion - the explanations of critical thinking and broadening perspectives and building vocabulary and communication skills and learning about other 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature people and places and understanding how and why the world works and exercising our brains and learning how to do things and how to be - the question of why reading matters comes to this, really: because we need to know we're not alone. Because within that kind of knowledge is a power that comforts and pushes and is the foundation for all those other purposes and outcomes of reading intelligently. If we read to know we're not alone, we write to codify that knowledge and to add one more voice for other people to discover as they take parts of it to build their own. The following pages are an expression of my appreciation for a handful of the hundreds of writers who've contributed to my voice, my moral code, and the image of the person I'm trying to become; it is an illustration of personal moments woven with analysis of language and story and message because each moment of reading brings with it our entire experience, because reading, at its core, is deeply personal and because, if we pay attention, reading can shape our spiritual selves. Prologue Thompson | 27 In my culture, we share and experience a common story repeatedly. It goes something like this: I have been thinking and praying about this problem lately. I wasn 't sure what to do or how to think about it. And then, as I was reading the Scriptures, they just seemed to open to this one page of their own accord. And there, even though it wasn't highlighted or anything, these words popped off the stark white page and my prayer was answered. I suspect the story is not unique to my culture; I know the story is not unique to official Scripture. But we hold on to our small, personal miracles of words, those moments when we felt that God knew who we were because we found a specific connection within the context of language. We like to say that we talk to God through prayer and we receive our answers through sacred text. It makes us feel connected to a larger significance; an essence as if we are integral parts of the whole world and that thousands of years ago, these particular words in some other language, were written just for us. But the thing with learning to love language, learning to believe that language has some higher power and purpose, is that it extends beyond particularly ordained texts; it extends beyond particular moments of sought-for revelation. Language and stories and writing all begin to have an otherworldly, essential purpose in guiding our impressions and shaping the way we perceive the world and our role in it. The more I read, the less I read for the epiphany, for the erratic flash of insight, for the specific answer to a specific prayer. Such moments are precious, but too rare to drive an obsession. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature Instead, I read for how the flow of words and ideas seeps into my veins, for the joy that is both unconscious and deliberate, for the expansion of my mind, imperceptibly painful, enlarging my consciousness. I read for the way a sentence becomes a part of my cells and shifts, minutely, the course of my decisions; for the way an author's voice melds with my own, creating a hybrid creature - one at once better and unaware of having become so. I do not only read for the moments; I read for the hours and days and years that are altered long after I've finished the book and the words have disappeared from my conscious recollection, for the subtle significant shaping of my view and the intentional shifting of my character and life practices. I read for the end that makes me sorry there aren't more pages and that forces me to look back through the text, reluctant to leave my new friend because I've just met another version of myself and feel a nostalgic need to further and prolong the acquaintance. I read because it breathes life into the core of my spirit, reacquainting me with the best of myself while also forcing me to confront the worst of my character and my world. I read because it is a private, personal, creative exchange among another human's words, my past experiences, and my present need... because within this personal, private exchange is the truth and essence of myself. Reading is my religious practice - the constant in my life of questioning because it is a practice that invites such questions, that grows and shifts only as I'm prepared to grow and shift with it. It is my truth because it causes me to find my truth. I read because I've been trained to obedience, raised to follow a path no matter how awkward to my spirit. Obedience is proof of my goodness, my selflessness, my sacrifice. Obedience is the triumph of the mind over the body, of the will of God over the Thompson | 27 will of my natural, evil, tendencies. Obedience is proof of my worthiness. So, I read for permission - as a prayer to the power and wisdom of ordinary women and men to be inspired and to inspire. I read for permission - as an act of both rebellion and faith. I read for permission - as an acknowledgment that obedience is an honorable, sacrificial, even noble submission. I read for permission to choose whom, what, and how I obey. I read for the stirring, quiet, compassion that guides and adjusts, that makes me - gently or violently, gradually or suddenly, patiently or irascibly, whole and new again and again. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature Thompson | 27 Chapter One: Sufficient in Experience Reading Jane Austen a) She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! alas! she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet (Persuasion, ch 19). "I take your place now, and you must go lower, because I am a married woman, " my little sister declares with a wink and a grin as she sits in my seat at the dinner table. She's been married a week. My exaggerated glare and "hmmff" as I shove her aside to reclaim my place draws laughter from the rest of the family. I'm twenty-three; she's twenty. I don't wish to be married right now, but I think - as I've thought since as each of my other sisters has married - that she's made a mistake. It will turn out that I am wrong on this one, but today I laugh with my family as we continue to banter about Jane Austen references throughout dinner, pretty sure that I'm holding in my smug and judgmental thoughts. (It will turn out that I am wrong about this as well - I'm not nearly as opaque as I think, and my arrogance will cause more than a few hurt feelings as my sister, who has until now been my best friend, and I each work through a sense of rejection and betrayal.) Melanie's use of Lydia's line is all the funnier because she's the least Lydia of us all - she's studious, organized and efficient - but not too much. She's a planner who avoids being a bore by maintaining a playful mischievousness and a carefully cultivated open mind. In other words, she's the most Lizzie of us all. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature We were lucky children who grew up with parents who believed in books. My favorite recollection is of my sisters and me, freshly bathed, sitting with our legs tucked up under our nighties, taking turns having Dad comb out our hair while Mom read stories. We'd listen to a chapter, then stop and talk about what was happening; we'd beg Mom to keep reading because we weren't really tired. As I learned to read, I'd wait for a moment when the book was unguarded and read ahead. The characters in the books became our friends, additional members of our family; the plots became adventures we acted out on Saturday mornings or placed ourselves in as we drifted to sleep; the authors' voices spoke to us, gradually shaping our individual morality and perspective of the world. We were probably pre-teens when we met Jane Austen. I don't really remember the introduction, but she seems a ubiquitous part of my teenage years, and when I went to college and met people who didn't know who she was, I felt their deficiency on a par with having somehow missed the names Thomas Jefferson or William Shakespeare. Austen felt essential - one of those classic writers who managed to maintain accessibility and relevance; a writer who made us feel smarter for reading her and better about the minutia of our lives; a writer who mocked the confines and mores of her society while upholding its values; a writer whose voice echoed through our hearts that we mattered simply because we existed, that our family mattered simply because it was ours, that the most significant change we would bring about in this world was the one within ourselves. I didn't know this is what she was telling me, didn't realize how often or extensively her voice echoed through my head reminding me of the ideals I most cherished. I knew only that I loved her, and, like all disciples, I felt anyone who'd missed her sermons had missed an essential part of the human experience. Thompson | 43 (2) Oh! It is only a novel!...or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language (Northanger Abbey, ch 5). Of course, my family is not unique in its love of Jane Austen. It seems that every Christmas, book stores prominently display a new edition, beautifully bound (or simply bound) of her six completed novels strategically situated next to a spin-off novel or the latest biography or a manners book. Over the course of the last two hundred years, her novels have never been out of print. Jane Austen sells and her stories and characters seem to permeate Western culture. Several theories try to account for the popularity: she is moral; she is inoffensive; she is funny; she is accessible; she is conservative, but not too conservative; she is subversive, but not too subversive; she is a feminist; she is not a feminist; she upholds the value of marriage; she criticizes the social construct of marriage; she validates religion; she leaves religion out of it; she instructs without preaching, demonstrates instead of tells, and helps us laugh at ourselves and our society without discounting either. I believe the myriad justifications prove the essence of Austen's popularity: she respected and trusted her reader and she wrote with subtle, deferential elegance about those things that matter most to the individual. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature Austen's novels initially appeared when novels were a relatively new form; novel readers were not serious scholars, but flighty, silly creatures incapable of the more rational, elevated ideas and language contained in poetry, plays, history, and philosophy. Novels were for play. Fortunately, Austen's family loved to play, and in addition to highbrow literature, she was a novel reader who developed a critical eye toward what worked for the genre and a respect for its purpose. In Northanger Abbey, a novel that parodies the gothic romance novels that were all the rage at the time, Austen allows her own author voice to interrupt with a defense of the novel and a criticism of self- depreciation as she describes the burgeoning friendship between her heroine, Catherine, and the disingenuous Isabella and their habit of novel reading: Yes, novels - for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—-joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it... Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried (Austen, Northanger Abbey 32). Thompson | 27 It is a somewhat rare moment of preachiness for Austen, but we forgive her because it is her first novel and because she is doing one of the things we love best: criticizing a system that encourages people, especially women, to disparage their own significance. Her somewhat hyperbolic conclusion - that novels have "afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world" (I know a few Shakespeare buffs, Wordsworth enthusiasts, and Whitman devotees who would vehemently argue with her assertion) - her bold declaration of the value of the novel, and her unabashed request that creators respect their creations inspires her reader to cheer and reaffirms to us her position of wise authority and accessible friend. It took some time for Austen to first publish, but when she did, her novels sold well - not extraordinarily, but comfortably enough to begin to be influential. The royal family read and admired her work - the Prince Regent sent his librarian to wait upon her when she visited London and hinted that she should dedicate her next edition to the prince. She was appalled, as she heartily disapproved of the Prince, but recognized the benefit of his endorsement to her career and with reluctance allowed an edition of Emma to run with the dedication, "To His Royal Highness The Prince Regent, This Work Is, BY His Royal Highness's Permission, Most Respectfully Dedicated, by his Royal Highness's Dutiful and Obedient Humble Servant, The Author" (Byrne 299-300). Her popularity has gradually, steadily increased over the last two hundred years, inspiring a league of "Janeites" - followers of varying levels of enthusiasm, protectiveness, and evangelical fervor. Partially because it is so popular and accessible, Austen's work avoided extensive literary analysis and criticism for most of the 19th century. And even now when I walk into a graduate level class, I frequently hear "Oh, Austen. Yeah, my wife likes her," or 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature "Well, if you've got a class of women, maybe you could study Austen," or "At this level, I'd rather study more serious writers." I usually return these statements with a look of appalled pity. But, I understand. Popularity breeds a sort of contempt - as if we've all inherited a J.D. Salinger gene and assume that if a significant percentage of the population can enjoy it, it must be too simple, too plebian, to have any real value. In his personal narrative/Austen criticism book Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me about Love, Friendship, and the Things that Really Matter, author William Dersiewicz illustrates this elitist disdain when he recounts his reaction to a th syllabus full of 19 century British women writers and his first real introduction to Austen: .. .nothing symbolized the dullness and narrowness of that whole body of work like the name Jane Austen. Wasn't she the one who wrote those silly romantic fairy tales? Just thinking about her made me sleepy. What I really wanted to study was modernism... Like so many young men, I needed to think of myself as a rebel, and modernism, with its revolutionary intensity, confirmed my self-image. I'd pass my days in a cloud of angry sarcasm, making silent speeches, as I stalked down Broadway in my John Lennon coat, against everything conventional, respectable and pious (2). While the content of what is considered "serious literature" may shift, the idea that Austen is not, in fact, "sophisticated" enough for study stems largely from her popularity, her gender, and her content - seemingly removed from the political and narrow in its scope. And yet, it is her very popularity that adds to Austen's merit as an author - she manages to remain, not only in print, but extensively so, influencing Thompson | 27 generation after generation, being adapted, per whichever current interpretation best suits the times and values, to film, to parody, to mimicry. This phenomena cannot be insignificant and gradually, in addition to her adoring fans, Austen has garnered more and more critical acclaim. Virginia Woolf- who has certainly been criticized for various reasons, but not for being unserious or unworthy of analysis - analyzed not only Austen's themes and characters, but the quality of her writing. "The sentence here," Woolf says of Pride and Prejudice "runs like a knife, in and out, cutting a shape clear. It is done in a drawing- room. It is done by the use of dialogue" (269). What appears a casual conversation, Woolf argues, accomplishes what many writers spend pages trying to explain. So, by means of perfectly natural question and answer, everyone is defined and, as they talk, they become not only more clearly seen, but each stroke of the dialogue brings them together or moves them apart, so that the group is no longer casual but interlocked. The talk is not mere talk; it has an emotional intensity which gives it more than brilliance (269). Woolf s analysis helps us realize that Austen is popular not only because of her content and themes, but because of how cleverly she wrote them. Woolf compares Austen to the later, arguably more popular writer, Dickens (who, reportedly, cared little for the acclaim of critics, preferring his crass popularity, and would be surprised and possibly a bit horrified to discover he is now read as a part of the literary cannon) and Dickens does not compare favorably: [In Pride and Prejudice] nothing happens, as things so often happen in Dickens, for its own oddity or curiosity both with relation to something 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature else... For, in order to develop personal relationship to the utmost, it is important to keep out of the range of the abstract, the impersonal; and to suggest that there is anything that lies outside men and women would be to cast a shadow of doubt upon the comedy of their relationships and its sufficiency (269). For Austen, and for Woolf, relationships are sufficient in their drama to feed an entire novel... and to inspire a multitude of followers. With these knife-like sentences and tightly constructed novels, Austen draws her readers into a world of the everyday, giving us permission to appreciate our everyday. Her writing avoids drawing attention to itself because to do so would patronize her reader and undermine her philosophy. Deresiewicz's first Austen novel was Emma, and he was nearly finished before he realized the error of his arrogance. He'd read "pages at a time of wit, silliness, high spirits, family news, gowns, weather, dances and colds... [Austen had] told us of4little affairs, arrangements, perplexities, and pleasures." He'd read, in essence, of ordinary, regular life and the relationships that make up that life without any of the angsty drama and pompous pathos that infused his favorite works. But somewhere along the way, he'd realized that: [Austen's] genius began with the recognition that such lives as hers were very eventful indeed—that every life is eventful, if only you know how to look at it. She did not think her existence was quiet or trivial or boring; she thought it was delightful and enthralling, and she wanted us to see that our own are, too. She understood that what fills our days should fill our hearts, and what fills our hearts should fill our novels (27). Thompson | 27 This writing of the ordinary, of what fills our days, of clever sentences and memorable phrases; this writing of middle class young women confined to an apparently narrow world who found ways to be independent within it; this writing that respects the lives of ordinary individuals and encourages us to have the strength to shift our characters for the better; this writing affirms those things we most need to understand. In our current media-blitzed world where fame and value frequently seem unconnected, it is often a challenge to reconcile popularity with worth. But once in a while we everyday humans, we regular people, we middling insignificants, get it right - because sometimes, though rarely, there's an artist brilliant enough to speak with us without condescension and thereby teach us the value of our ordinary lives and the power of our personal, independent will. Sometimes, we're lucky enough to stumble across an Austen novel in which "the greatest powers of the mind are displayed." In Austen, we find a writer with "the most thorough knowledge of human nature," who writes with "the liveliest effusions of wit and humour" and who does all of this "in the best chosen language." And so, we give her our hearts and our loyalties because she has respected our minds. (3) My Dearest Cassandra... yours ever, JANE (Letters of Jane Austen). "Hey. Are you awake?" My whisper feels loud in the silent room; I can hear Melanie's even breathing from several feet away if I concentrate hard enough, but tonight I need a little more assurance of her presence. "Melanie?" My whisper is a little louder. "Yeah," she whispers back. "I'm here." I relax back into my bed, tension leaving my shoulders and back as my legs uncurl. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature "Okay." That's all I need and the room settles back, feeling somehow safer than it did a few minutes ago. On another night, she calls out first: "Leslie? Are you awake?" "I'm here," I answer. Sometimes the whispered question goes unanswered and the night seems longer. Sometimes the question leads to a conversation during which we discuss the thing that's keeping us awake - a fight between us, between our parents, or some big plans that are overblown and exciting in the midst of darkness and imagination. It has been two decades since we lived in the same bedroom, and I no longer remember what caused the urgency on any particular night when I felt compelled to call for the person I loved most in the world, but as tangible to me as my fingers and eyelashes is the feeling of comfort conveyed by the knowledge that we were both awake and breathing, sharing the same air and the same worries. We are drastically different people, Melanie and 1.1 thought she was crazy when she gave up a chance to go to Paris because it would throw off her college graduation schedule. She thinks I'm crazy whenever I pack up my house again and head off to some strange country. She is one of those practical, organized people - she believes in what she calls the ninety-eight percent rule and applies it to as much of her life as possible: "Ninety-eight percent is an A-plus," she says and it requires fifty percent more effort to go from ninety-eight percent to one hundred percent, so making sure everything is perfect is a waste of energy - just worry about doing everything well. I, on the other hand, am a last minute hundred percent-er. My projects - solar systems or bug collections or speech posters - became frantic family projects, and after my tired minions had finally gone to bed, I'd miss entire nights of sleep fixing that last two percent—throwing away smudged Thompson | 27 drafts or re-painting imperfect planets. We never even knew about Melanie's projects because they were finished days early, safely admirable in their ninety-eight percent range of excellence. Melanie became a lawyer and spends her days reading and writing real-estate contracts (how can she do something so...boring...I wonder); I spent my twenties trying on a few different careers and now spend my days with seventeen year olds who seem to be in a constant state of emergency (how can I do something so... messy... she wonders). Her marriage works. Mine did not. I think she's one of the loveliest people on the planet, ever. She thinks I'm one of the best gifts in her life. Our relationship does not define us, but its existence enhances our experiences and helps us shape our characters. In all the word implies, we are sisters. (4) Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply... (Mansfield Park ch 24). "Adoring Jane Austen as I do, I found it impossible to believe that (as historians tell us) Jane Austen never had a love affair of her own," writes Syrie James, an author capitalizing on Austen's popularity with her own imagined history The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen. "How could it be that this brilliant woman, who gave the world such delightful and romantic stories, never fell in love herself?" she asks. To which question I feel the need to spit and sputter. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature '"Never fell in love?" I shout back at my computer as I read this, mentally avoiding superfluous exclamation points. What emotion do we think her books, her letters, her relationship with her family are filled with? Indifference? Cool detachment? Tepid "like"? Do we honestly believe that the only way to understand "delightful" romance is to have a sexually charged, heterosexual relationship in our lives when we "fell" in love? Yes, I'm afraid - especially for a woman writer - we seem to believe this. Hence, the plethora of novels and films that blow out of proportion Jane Austen's relationship with Tom Lefroy, with whom she shared a brief flirtation, or play with time travel, or imagine that Biggs-Whither's proposal, which she accepted and then rejected, was fraught with some kind of romantic angst, or invent for her some suitor from the publishing industry or a different class of society or who was, in some way, unattainable and therefore tragically impossible. With a cursory reading, and any experience with the films of Austen's books, it is understandable that we over-emphasize the female-male romantic relationship. Her books end in marriages - her heroines earning their happy ending with the reward of an appropriate husband. There are also, of course, the romantic speeches sparsely distributed throughout the novels: Darcy declares (against his better judgment), "In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you"; Wentworth writes, "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you"; Knightly affirms, "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more." And thus, from six novels, we have three romantic speeches. The other three novels' heroes are clergymen and I don't believe it's coincidence that their affection is even more reticent than the somewhat more worldly, though by no means less noble, non-clergy heroes. Thompson | 27 Like many an Austen reader, I adore these few lines of declaration and my heart thrills not a little or infrequently at the arch of the romantic relationships. I do, however, question the implication that this arch was the purpose of her novels - or even their primary appeal. And I ache at the implication that a person, a woman, cannot understand the intricacies of the human heart or the significance of her various relationships without having experienced some significant "romance" of her own. By page count alone, Austen tells us which relationships matter the most: "Sisters talking together," asserts John Mullan, "in Jane Austen's fiction, what form of intimacy could be more important? Sisters, after all, have more opportunities for confidences than any of Austen's lovers" (59). John Mullan delineates the significance of sisters throughout Austen's fiction in his essay "Sisterly Chat," in which he points out that "all Austen's heroines have sisters" and carefully walks through each novel, identifying the effect of "sisterly confidences" - both positive and negative - on the characters involved. "Jane Austen was one of the first novelists to write about pairs of sisters. In Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice we are given pairs of sisters whose relationship to one another matters as much as their interest in a romantic match" (Byrne 103). Whether it's Jane and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, who seek opportunities to speak to each other, who are each other's sounding board, whose relationship promotes self- confidence and individual growth, or Maria and Julia Bertram from Mansfield Park, who have an "antagonistic intimacy" until they've "ceased to talk to each other," (Mullan 40) or Elinor and Marianne from Sense and Sensibility who challenge each other with their disparate characters but protect each with a fiercer, more realistic passion than either displays toward a lover, we see that sisters and their relationships take up a good portion of Austen's space and that the lessons of a relationship - compassion, integrity, 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature independent growth, negative pressure, desire for approval, confidence - are all adroitly manifest. Within these sisters' relationships, we see that goodness promotes goodness, that characters are enhanced by "sisterly confidences" when there is goodness and integrity at the heart of them; that sneakiness and deception are more pronounced when encouraged by sisters; and that through these subtle adjustments of character, sisters influence each other morally, socially, intimately... but they still each allow the other maintenance of her independent personality. The sister relationship is so important to Austen that heroines who are in some way removed or estranged from their sisters find surrogate sisters. Catherine Morland, of Northanger Abbey, Austen's youngest heroine, leaves her several sisters at home as she goes on her adventure. She almost immediately makes an intimate acquaintance: Isabella, the older, knowledgeable girl who will break Catherine's heart and do more to help her grow up than any other character. It is true that Henry's belief in Catherine helps her overcome her embarrassment and hurt at Isabella's disingenuousness, but what saves Catherine is Henry's sister Eleanor - it is Eleanor who teaches Catherine to "love a hyacinth," where we begin to see the concept of, as Deresiewicz points out, "learning to learn." While learning from experiences - small ones, random conversations, our own misjudgments - happens throughout the whole of the heroine's experience, these lessons are clarified, intensified, and solidified through familial relationships rather than romantic ones - even if they are manifested, ultimately in the romantic relationship. In modern times, Austen's least popular heroine is probably Fanny Price of Mansfield Park. She's moralistic, she's prudish, she lacks the sparkle and charm of Elizabeth or Emma or Catherine and the self-confident sense of purpose of Elinor or Anne. And while she does have sisters - one with whom she even shares some Thompson | 27 confidence - she is predominately alone. At first Edmond acts in part the role that sisters or surrogate sisters serve in Austen's other novels - he is her friend, her confidant, her teacher. But Edmond is a bit too revered by Fanny for them to have the level of intimacy developed in Austen's sister relationships and Edmond betrays Fanny by falling in love with the charming, amoral, Mary Crawford. The betrayal is not so much that he loves someone else when Fanny secretly loves him, but that he does not see past Mary's surface, that he affords her qualities she doesn't possess to justify his feelings, that he betrays his principles—those very principles he and Fanny have previously most valued. And so, Fanny is left alone to stew in her righteousness and the intense feelings which she is free to share with no one. Mansfield Park is perhaps Austen's darkest, most morally didactic work and there were certainly more themes than that of how the lack of family affects one's character - and Fanny's character, for all her personality flaws, is above reproach. But to compare Fanny with Austen's other characters, who all have a sister or sister surrogate as a sounding board, seems to speak of the importance of this relationship in the development, even the sanity, of a woman. In a Jane Austen novel, the hero may be a catalyst for change, but he remains external to the heroine. Sisters, though, help reflect process, depth, and understanding - they are internal and therefore, unlike the hero, essential. It seems reasonable to assume that Jane Austen died a virgin; she certainly never married; and the most significant relationship of her life was with her sister, Cassandra, with whom she shared a bedroom (although not, it turns out as some have suggested, a bed) for the bulk of her life (Mullan 60). Cassandra's fiance Tom Fowle died of yellow fever in San Domingo, and it seems that after this tragedy, neither sister seriously considered marriage. "Cassandra's conduct in bereavement might have been 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature impeccable," writes Paula Byrne in her recent Austen biography The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, "but she all too quickly adopted widow's weeds and abandoned all further thoughts of matrimony. She resigned herself to spinsterhood and didn't change her mind" (95). While Jane Austen may have considered marriage more seriously (a fake marriage bans appears in the family Bible, in which she plays with the construct - she and her fake husband, a "Jack and Jane Smith" witness their own marriage) had Cassandra herself married, as Byrne hypothesizes due to the increased evidence of Jane's flirtations during Cassandra's engagement (174), there never seems to be a significant "love" in Jane's life. And yet, there is a remarkably significant love, even loves. All evidence indicates that Jane Austen was a "very private person" but she opened up to Cassandra, as revealed through the few letters we have remaining. Byrne writes: In her letters to Cassandra, she allowed herself a freedom of expression and thought denied to many others of her family and friends. They were, according to their niece Caroline Austen, 'open and confidential.' In the Georgian era, letters were like newspapers, passed around and read aloud to members of the family and friends, but we can see from Jane Austen's comments that some parts of them were intended to remain private. She was carefully to share only selected parts of Cassandra's letters... Jane Austen's letters to Cassandra catch her in the act of private conversation, which is one reason her voice sounds so modern and familiar (96). When Cassandra and Jane were apart, they wrote frequently and extensively; when they were together, they shared a room and confidences. Jane thought Cassandra the smartest, wittiest, cleverest individual; Cassandra thought Jane the most remarkable, Thompson | 27 dearest friend. Their niece, Anna Austen wrote that "'Their affection for each other was extreme; it passed the common love of sisters; and it had been so from childhood.' But," Byrnes adds: the true indicator of the strength of their attachment is in Cassandra's own words, written after her sister's death, when she had indeed been to Jane 'my nurse, my friend, my sister': 'I have lost a treasure, such a Sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed, - She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself (106). When one wonders where Jane Austen found the passion, the voice, the intensity, the sense of love to imbue her characters with warmth, affection, longing, even romance, it seems trivial to comb through her life in order to find evidence of some male lover. Her life was full and relevant and interesting. With her six brothers, each providing a different sort of perspective and experience, her parents who promoted and encouraged not only her study, but also her writing and irreverent wit, her exotically connected aunt and cousin, her gaggle of nieces and nephews with whom she always remained a favorite, her publishing friends and acquaintances, her keen eye for observation, her quick mind for dissemination and understanding, her sometimes cutting wit to see beyond the hypocrisy but also into the goodness and fullness of a "simple" life, and her dear, dear sister, Jane Austen had a life full enough of experience, of emotion, of knowledge, to explain her ability to write the vast and unquantifiable significance that makes up the human experience - and to do so in a way that continues to shape our perspectives and cheer our hearts. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature (5) We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it (Mansfield Park, ch 42) It is one of those perfect June evenings. The air is comfortable and the mountains feel friendly and protective as they embrace the valley. We are sitting in my friend's backyard, meeting for our book club discussion. We are a collection of women connected by various associations and our love of books. We've spent the last several months re-reading each of Jane Austen's novels, but today's discussion is about Virginia Woolf. We first catch up on our lives - the meetings and soccer games that garnered attendance, the recipes or blogs that caught attention, an interesting magazine article, a new book or film coming out. My niece plays peek-a-boo with a cat while we segue gradually into the content of our book. But the discussion of the book inevitably leads back to a discussion of our lives. We start to consider the difference between making decisions based on expectation and making them based on our actual needs, and if we're living happily, or just living to meet some arbitrary objective we don't consider because we're afraid to change. And it occurs to me that that we're lucky to even have the luxury to think about these questions. I look around at us - average looking women in a lovely suburban backyard, talking about philosophy and children, about what we're doing and how we're doing. I remember Austen's Emma and the women who wove themselves through her life, gossiping and planning and discussing and giving. I think of Austen herself and her apparently simple, dignified life that still managed to defy predictability. "Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to plague you, but as a rational creature, Thompson | 27 speaking the truth from her heart," pleads Austen's Elizabeth when rejecting a proposal that would establish her future. I wonder how often these words, the various scenes and messages from Austen's work, have fluttered in the back of my mind as I've wondered about a choice or thought about who I ought to be. The breeze comes in gently through the portico, lifting the hair of women intent on questioning the puzzle of themselves through literature. We are enough, I think, as we begin to wish there was more we could do, a bigger role we could play. Our experience is sufficient. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature Interlude Thompson | 27 Mother's Day, 2014 Dear Mom, I love you. Thank you for being my Mom, for raising me to feel confidence and security in your love, for the joy you take in my mere existence, for believing in my goodness and for telling me so. Thank you for being selfless enough that I could be selfish while, paradoxically, still cultivating an innate responsibility and need to make my life meaningful beyond myself. You will not be surprised by your gift: it is a book of course. I have read this book several times over the last couple of months. I have loved it. It has been such a pleasure to me because it is the story of a woman and her mother, a love song to the single most influential person in her life. I cannot help but think of you, of your appreciation for plants and birds and beautiful words, as I read. I cannot help but think of Grandma and her graciousness and affection and warmth and love of plants and birds and beautiful words, as I read. I miss her. This is the memoir of a woman who thinks differently about a few essential things than her mother, but this did not hinder their sense of mutual respect, of belonging to each other. I am reminded of you and Grandma. I am reminded of you and me. I worry, a little, that you'll think I'm preaching somehow, or justifying myself, or trying to persuade you about.. .anything. But I have cried with love for you, with longing for Grandma as I read, and I remembered that you trust me and you love me and you think the best of me. Thank you for teaching me to love language and literature. Thank you for listening to my take on stories and characters and ideas; thank you for making me believe 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature that my words were worth listening to, that my perspective mattered to someone. Thank you for talking about characters and stories and ideas, for showing me that your perspective and interpretation deserved a voice. Thank you for raising me in a house full of books and discussions and respect. I love you so much, Leslie Thompson | 27 Chapter Two: Soul v. Religion Reading Walt Whitman o) Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from; ... This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds (Leaves of Grass 1855, 51). I frequently stay late at work - ostensibly to grade papers and plan torture for my students - and end up in long discussions with one of my favorite people. The two of us share a wall—and ideas, and impassioned speeches about the state of the world, the hypocrisy of our current culture, and how literature plays a role in all of it. In one of our recent discussions, my friend mentioned a study she'd heard about the inevitable outcome of most organizations. We were discussing technology, and then the government, and then religion - a common discussion cycle for us. I started talking about how Apple had been founded by Hackers, a group of tech nerds so excited about their codes that the concept of proprietary knowledge baffled them, only to become the company that just sued another company over the shape of a corner. Her related story was about how that is the natural course for any organization - including religions and possibly, especially governments. They start out with ideas outside of the norm, small groups of people with radical thoughts, adventurous souls, touches of brilliance, and impassioned beliefs in the good and rights of everyone. And as they succeed, as those companies or religions or governments grow and gain power, they gradually abandon the principles which inspired them and become beds of conformity and conservatism. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature I thought about this trend toward conservatism, toward conformity, toward safety through numbers and fear, as I listened to the news about gun laws and healthcare and taxes. I listened to the arguments of one large organization and a large party versus another large party and other groups of activists. I listened and became more discouraged as all sides claim to fight the same thing—only all sides are promoting fear and conformity. And then I read some Whitman. I don't know why it made me feel better. Whitman was angry, frustrated, and touting the same frustration with conformity and manipulation of fear that spurs my current disillusionment with my government and fellow citizens. But somehow, Whitman's anger makes me feel better about my own anger. Whitman questions our party system, our tendency to choose leaders from not among ourselves, but from the elite, and our propensity to move from the radical, exciting, questioning, uncomfortable place that brings about change to the "stifling atmosphere that makes all the millions of farmers and mechanics of These States... helpless" because of the nonsensical need for "respectability." His questioning the party system echoes my own thoughts ("ARE NOT POLITICAL PARTIES ABOUT PLAYED OUT? I say they are, all round. America has outgrown parties; henceforth it is too large, and they too small" - Imagine this criticism was 160 years ago!) and his questioning where the real Americans are in our government feels like he took my thoughts and made them fuller and sharper. Reading Whitman made me angrier - but oddly my anger was clarifying and purposeful. As I re-read the essay - that gorgeously scathing piece of work "The Eighteenth Presidency" in which Whitman questions the integrity and motives of the leaders of our pre-civil war country while honoring still the essence of America-1 found the answer Thompson | 27 buried in the middle. It makes me feel better because in spite of all this anger, Whitman believed in the future of America because Whitman believed in the everyday person. "ARE THE STATES RETARDED THEN?" Whitman asks. "No," he answers: While all is drowned and desperate that the government has had to do with, all outside the influence of government (for ever the largest part,) thrives and smiles. The sun shines, corn grows, men go merrily about their affairs, houses are built, ships arrive and depart. Through evil and through good, the republic stands... out of dastards and disgraces, fortunate are the wrongs that call forth stout and angry men; then is shown what stuff there is in a nation. / The young genius of America is not going to be emasculated and strangled just as it arrives toward manly age. It shall live, and yet baffle the politicians (1,335-1,336). With all the vitriol in politics - the fights over what it means to "keep and bear arms", the role of government in our pocketbooks, healthcare system, and bedrooms - it seems we could all use a little more Whitman in our lives. Not because he's going to make things seem easier or more manageable; not because his writing makes me feel safer about the current world or nostalgic for the past one; and not because he justifies my every opinion. We need more Whitman because he delineates the arguments we're still having, he addresses the issues we continue to face, and in spite of - or perhaps because of - his acerbic voice. ("The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater" ["Democratic Vistas" 961].) We need more Whitman because he portrays an undying hope in the strength of the common man - that regular guy who works every day and believes in the product of his labors. ("True, indeed, behind this fantastic farce, enacted on the visible stage of society, solid things and 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature stupendous labors are to be discover'd, existing crudely and going on in the background, to advance and tell themselves in time" [Democratic Vistas" 962].) Whitman believed that the hope of the nation lay not in the brilliance of the system, the infallibility of our historic documents, or - heaven forbid - the justice of those in office, but in the daily labor of the person who makes something, who works hard, and lives his regular life with integrity. We, the regular people, are the ones who matter most. We, the everyday people, who work hard... we continue to baffle the politicians. Through civil rights movements, war protests or war movements, short editorials, frustrated workers unionizing, and people going about living their lives honestly... we continue to go on, to fight the daily battle, the real battles - the battles that matter. As long as we continue to do this, with integrity and meaning and value in ourselves, we will continue to surprise the rich and powerful, the organizations that've grown too big for their ideals, too cynical for their principles, and too conservative to really server their members, and we will continue to surprise ourselves. It might take another revolution. But maybe it will just take a bit more reading of Whitman. (2) The message of great poets to each man and woman are, Come to us on equal terms, Only then can you understand us, We are no better than you (.Leaves of Grass -1855, 14). It's a crisp day in Mongolia - except for a couple of weeks in July, all of the days here are crisp - and my missionary companion and I are talking with a sincere woman in Thompson | 27 her forties. She's short and tired and looking for some depth and meaning. Depth and meaning is my stock in trade these days, so I eagerly share with her my testimony of Christ, my belief in a prophet, my conviction that she, like me, can find peace. I'm twenty-two, taking time out of school to serve the world on behalf of my Mormon faith and my God, and - in spite of a few times having the rug pulled from under my belief- solid in my knowledge that there is one path and that I know what it is. I invite this lovely woman to pray. "Ask God," I say in stunted Mongolian. "He'll tell you what you need to know." I, of course, already know the answer she'll receive. Two weeks later, my companion and I visit again. "God didn't tell me it was true," she says. I have an immediate answer: "Are you prepared to live by His commandments when you do hear the answer?" "Oh, yes," she says, sure of her desires. I have my doubts. I know, of course, that God answers prayers and that He will answer this woman's sincere request. I also know the answer she'll receive. So, she must be doing something wrong. I invite her to pray again. My companion and I return regularly. Each time, we're convinced that this time she will have heard the voice of God and will know the truth. The day never comes. When I leave the area, I am still certain that she must have done something wrong, that her intent must not have been pure. God always works the same way. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature (3) Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from (Leaves of Grass, 211). In the early nineteenth century, America was abuzz with religious fervor. Fresh off of a revolution, and confident in the brash way of adolescents, Americans were looking for a religion that fed their independent spirit while maintaining a sense of superiority and justification. And religions rose to the call. David Kuebrich, in his essay on Religion in the Walt Whitman Encyclopedia, describes the time period: Antebellum American society was ... notable in that it had no state- sponsored church and was officially committed to religious freedom, thus providing fertile ground for a large number of denominations and sects. This lack of governmental support and competitive context... meant that the various religious bodies were not only dependent on their own resources but also had a clear need for a committed and active laity... These same denominations had also cultivated a tradition of viewing the United States as a new Israel with the special mission of creating a truly Christian society... It was, in short, a Christianity that attempted to inculcate its members with a high degree of moral earnestness and social engagement (581). It was an ideal time for a preacher like Ralph Waldo Emerson to propose a uniquely American take on religion. He, and other philosophers like him, introduced the concept of "spirituality" as something different from religion. "Actually, the concept of spirituality (individualistic, mystic, pluralist) as distinct from religion (institutional, Thompson | 27 creedal, orthodox) originated in the 1830s with the flowering of Emerson's distinctive variety of Romanticism," says Michael Robertson in his essay "Reading Whitman Religiously." He continues: When Emerson wrote in 'Self-Reliance' that 'nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind,' he was not merely rejecting the truth claims of Christianity in favor of a radical individualism; he was arguing that the self is indeed sacred, that the divine is to be found within... From the 1860s on, many turned as well to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (2). This new burgeoning spirituality provided a perfect moment for Walt Whitman to make his entrance onto the stage of American literature. Here, in the midst of a young nation struggling to define its political, artistic, and economic identity, a "democratic poet" emerged. In fact, "Emerson's work as a whole helped to prepare readers for the liberal, post-Christian spirituality that pervades Leaves of Grass" (Robertson 1). Whitman's poetry reflected a sort of "religious democracy" - a combination of the Emerson version of "spirituality" being more important than religion with a sense that all - the body, the soul, busy streets of a city, and the gentle wings of a butterfly - were part of the whole of religion. "I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul," Whitman proclaimed (207). Because of this democratic approach to spirituality, Whitman remains the poet people find when they search for refuge from religion. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature (4) But these leaves conning you con at peril, For these leaves and me you will not understand\ They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you (Leaves of Grass, 271). I'm getting married in an hour. I re-read the vows I wrote a couple of weeks ago and tears make tracks from my eyes to lips. My parents wish I was marrying in the temple and I wish I wasn't marrying at all. Ten days ago, the emotion left... it winked out in a moment when I learned about yet another lie my fiance had told me. In the last two weeks, I've come to despise him. I could just walk out. But months ago, I was told in several answers to prayers that I was to marry him. I prayed for myself and received an answer -1 knew. I knew it like I knew my church was true and God was real. I knew it like I knew my parents loved me. And then, my Bishop - my priesthood authority - blessed me, and in the blessing, he told me the same answer: God wanted me to marry this man. Something, I think, is trying to tell me to leave, that I will regret this decision. But my heart is dead and all I have now is my foggy mind and the memory that God loves me and told me to do this. Surely if He said so, it will work out. Surely I'm just nervous; my heart will revive -1 will be in love, and we will be happy. Fourteen months later, I stare at papers that set me free. Thompson | 43 (5) Spontaneous me, Nature, The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with (Leaves of Grass, 260) I believe in you, my soul, Whitman asserts in his first edition of Leaves of Grass. The consistent references to the soul and God make it difficult to avoid a religious interpretation of Whitman's works. And Whitman himself encouraged such interpretation. He envisioned his Leaves as the New Bible and himself as a prophet. This was not the religion of churches and prayers and congregations - it was a religion of thought and democracy. "If other Americans were founding new religions, so, in a sense, was he: a poetic religion based on progressive science and idealist philosophy that preached the miracle of the commonplace, the possibilities of the soul" explains David Reynolds in Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography (255-257). Here, in the mix of the commonplace and possibilities, is where most readers connect with Whitman. "Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune," he asserts, constantly reminding his reader with an odd mix of humble confidence. "Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, / Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,/Strong and content I travel the open road" ("Song of the Open Road" 297). It is the embracing and reflection of multiple attitudes, multiple people, and multiple ideas. It is the religion of trusting the self, the earth, and, yes, God - but the God whom we find within ourselves, within the respect we show to others, within the context of nature and society and the glory of what our minds and hands can create. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud... And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes... I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, Ifind letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe 'er I go, Others will punctually come for ever and ever ("Song of Myself' 244- 245). It is an admonition to be awake and alive to who we are, recognizing the divinity within ourselves and the divinity within our world. It is a philosophy of introspection, of action, of firm faith in a God that gave us our glorious selves - and a God who is worshipped through a respect of that glorious self, a reverence for the natural work of divine hands, and an honor and appreciation for all the other souls on the earth who are also, themselves, divine. And so, whether it is a religious excursion or a search for original poetry or a justification for trusting in the individual, the seeker finds something soothing, something inspiring, something of hope, doctrine, and instruction in Whitman's words. Thompson | 27 (6) Your true soul and body appear before me, They standforth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem... I should have made my way straight to you long ago (Leaves of Grass, 375). It's not long after six a.m. on a gorgeous summer morning. I've been recovering from my marriage for almost a year and am on a health kick of renewal. So today, I woke before the sun to run in the cool dawn air. My pace is slow and steady. My footfalls mingle with the sounds of a lake pump, a random distant car, my busy mind, the subtle breeze rushing through the various grasses, the honk-honk of geese. I wave and smile as other runners - a couple of women with strollers, a strong, swift young man, a clearly long-married couple - pass me, each on a different journey but for a moment taking the same path. The moon and the stars and the almost sunrise gave a magical half-light to my run as I started. Now, the sky is coming alive as the dark blue gives way to the brighter hue of day. I round the corner of the lake and see... The sun peeping over the ragged, majestic mountains... which stuns me to a stop. There is something about it today in this moment and I know. For this instant, I am one with the sun, with the mountains, with the path beneath my feet. We are... truth and love. We are happy. Today, in a brief glimpse, I see my soul. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature (7) You furnish your parts toward eternity, Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul (Leaves of Grass, SIS). "Spirituality pervades Leaves of Grass" says Michael Robertson, who traced histories of several people who turned Whitman into a sort of Religion for themselves. One such follower, John Burroughs claimed, "There is nothing more to be said after he gives his views. It is as if Nature herself had spoken" (3). A close friend of mine had a college professor who preferred reading Whitman to scripture when his own father died. When my friend first told me of this, I appreciated the idea that truth can be found outside of "sanctioned" material, but as I read Whitman more, I find that there is something unique about this particular writer that works for a person in pain. "Sometimes with one I love," he writes, "/fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn 'd love/But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain one way or another" ("Sometimes with One I Love" 285). Perhaps it's his own constant searching for an answer of who he is, or maybe it's just his innate compassion for others and confidence in the importance of his perspective. Whatever the cause, Whitman's words can often feel like scripture: "/ say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake. / J say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,/None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough, /None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is" ("Starting from Paumanok" 180). During his day, several people considered him a prophet. It wasn't so much the workers of the American city, as he'd hoped, but the British intellectuals that embraced his works. There is an odd Whitmanian irony in this, that we don't get to choose how we Thompson | 27 are taken, just what we produce; and the democratic idea that all people (even elite British) have souls worth exploring. This prophetic vision of Whitman is no longer the popular perspective. Today, Whitman is seen more as a religious guide than a prophet. While looking into Whitman's 21 ^-century disciples, Robertson encountered: people across the United States and England who consider Whitman to be a religious figure. I attended services at a Unitarian chapel in Bolton where the minister salted his sermon with quotations from Leaves of Grass; I participated in a guided-meditation session at a Quaker meetinghouse in Washington, D.C., that used Whitman's words as a guide to higher states of consciousness; and I met with a New Jersey secretary of commerce in his office to talk about how, as a teenager living in Camden, he felt a mystical connection to Whitman as he jogged past the poet's tomb in Harleigh Cemetery. These 21 ^-century readers of Whitman don't deify the poet... and they are not inclined to make Leaves of Grass the basis of a movement to transform society... But Leaves of Grass is important to many readers today not just as a book of poetry but also as a foundation of their spiritual lives (6-7). (8) Whatever satisfies the soul is truth (Leaves of Grass-1855, 23). I'm snuggled into the corner of my sofa with my dog curled in the crook of my knees. The lights are dim, candles flicker from a few different clusters around the room, gentle instrumental music softly fills the silence, and within comfortable reach, a glass of 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature wine rests on a coaster. It's a cozy scene, carefully arranged, and a reflection of who I want to be rather than of who I am. I hold the glass of wine between both hands like a cup of tea, sip, close my eyes, and wonder if I'm evolving into my real self or just committing an act of petty rebellion. My dog wiggles out of her spot and begins whining and running to the door. I grab her leash and shove my feet into tennis shoes without untying and re-tying them first. We wander outside and snow falls in chunky, gentle flakes on my sweater and along my hair. I close my eyes and again breathe and think. The chilly air is just invigorating enough to wake up my senses, but not so cold that I dance around anxious to go back inside. For a moment, standing in the snow and thinking of my rebellious glass of wine waiting, I smile and realize I am happy. It's been a long time coming, this serenity with who I am and who I am not. But I'm slowly learning to shed the threads of guilt and expectation. I'm beginning to reconcile my upbringing with my heart. I'm learning what it means to nourish my soul and to welcome the phrase, "I don't know." I grew up in a religion of knowing. My parents know about God and Christ and the marvelous master plan. I learned the right way to pray, the right people to associate with, the right words to say, the right way to live. I grew up in God's true church and wasn't I the most fortunate person. And, therefore, also so obligated to be responsible. With such a magnificent gift of truth and knowledge comes a magnificent expectation - of obedience and service and correct choices. With the weight of justice and goodness and God's righteous power on my side, I went forth and made good choices. I prayed and felt and read and studied and testified. I knew. Thompson | 27 I believed with all the power of my sensitive soul. I listened for answers to prayers and attended all the meetings and did all of the right things. I lived as truly as I suppose most people can with such expectations of perfection. And if I gazed a little longingly at people who drank that elegant glass of wine with dinner or women who un-selfconsciously bared their shoulders in sleeveless blouses, well, these were small sacrifices to make for the truth and all that knowledge I'd been blessed with. My grandmother - my mother's mother - will forever be one of life's best presents to me. She was a lovely woman who worked to make everyone feel comfortable in her home. She read voraciously, smoked too much and always had a glass of wine with dinner. Maybe she's the one who first planted that skeptical thought that perhaps we can't really know such things as God and Eternity. When my parents married in the temple and she couldn't attend - that sacred building where families are started - she was hurt and frustrated, but she didn't let it make her bitter about her daughter's children. She loved us and we understood that. I was raised to not judge her for her choices - the smoking and the alcohol and the complete lack of religion - but to love her in spite of them and for who she was. But I was also raised to believe that I knew better than to make those choices. And when my grandmother, in a rare moment of criticism of the way I'd been raised, said, "I just have such a hard time believing that one group can have the truth" for the first time, all those words I'd just accepted sounded like the height of arrogance. But I justified it as a misinterpretation... as a way that man inadvertently changes God's intent, but the intent is still true and right and good. And I couldn't abandon God because of a prideful twist of meaning. ("/ will play a part no longer," says Whitman, "why should I exile myself from my companions? / O you shunn'dpersons, I at least do not shun you,/1 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,/1 will be more to you than to any of the rest ["Native Moments" 265].) My grandmother died more than ten years ago, and once in a while I catch myself thinking of calling her to tell her how I'm doing. I believe, sometimes, she's somewhere near, proud or disappointed or just happy I exist and we knew each other. I don't know this happens, but there are moments when I believe it, and in those moments I feel a grounded sense of peace and wonder. It comes almost as much from the not knowing as from the belief itself. Maybe it's because grandma provided a touchstone for my skepticism. Maybe it's because my parents, while teaching me that there were things we knew, also asked enough questions and placed enough faith in the quality of my mind. Or maybe there were just enough little experiences and big questions - maybe I sinned a few too many times or trusted an answered prayer once too often. I don't quite know the process of un-knowing, but somehow, I'm experiencing it. A couple of weeks ago, while listening to a recording of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, my eyes filled and I had to pull my car over to the side of the road. "This is what you shall do," I heard, and on this day, in this moment, these were instructions I needed: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, Thompson | 27 re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips andface and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body... (Leaves of Grass - 1855, 11). I sat on the side of the road and re-played it again and again. "Dismiss whatever insults your own soul." I'd been needing those words. I cried with the emotion of discovery. And I knew that I'd found my own personal truth. My own phrase to live by - for now. It is strange how these things happen. I just turned thirty-seven and I finally feel like I'm starting to grow up. I'm struggling through all of those processes I used to think knowing the truth inoculated me from - I'm questioning the Tightness of my parents and their religion; I'm questioning my own choices and the beliefs I've always taken as truths; I'm starting to wonder who I am really - the person I crave to be in the quietness of my soul - but whose own expectations are daunting in a way that makes me almost miss the security of a check list. For the first time, it doesn't sound selfish or childish, but freeing. And so, perhaps I'm not only learning myself, but also finding God. For now, finding God means figuring out what offends my soul, listening and honestly considering the various perspectives I encounter, rejecting the belief that I'm somehow better and more responsible for the world's salvation than a person born in a different country or to a different religion, and dismissing knowing. In freeing myself from knowing, I'm enabling a previously untapped ability to learn. The power and possibility of what might be is liberated as, with relief, I shout in my head, I don 7 know. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature Interlude Thompson | 27 "I hated the whole thing, but I couldn't put it down." We're at that day in the quarter when my students have completed an independent reading assignment. They share the pros and cons of their individual book choices and as a class we discuss common themes, interesting characters and engaging plots. My only requirement for this assignment is that students choose an American classic, and I'm fairly liberal about what I allow as a "classic." I give the assignment four times per year and every time a handful of students from each class chooses to read The Great Gatsby. Gatsby's story is the one my student is currently half-complaining about. Her comment is met by nods and mumbles of agreement from the other students who've read the book. "Why couldn't you put it down?" I ask. "I don't really know," she says slowly. "It's like I kept getting pulled along even though I didn't really like anything." "Yeah," another kid pipes in. "It's like this soap opera that moves super slow and then all of a sudden everything already happened." "I liked it," says someone else. "I just don't really know why, "cause I kinda didn't like it either." They go back and forth for another minute or two and then we discuss some common things that make books readable: Fitzgerald is a meticulous writer, crafting each sentence and scene to compel us along with his gorgeous prose; the time period has a glitzy aura; there are themes we read and study frequently (the inevitable impossibility of the American Dream, the East side vs. West side divisions of society, the recurring adultery and all that has to say about other failed dreams - none of which are likely to 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature make us happy about the reading experience); and then there are the characters themselves and our ability to connect with them. My kids play along with the ideas of style and theme - they're used to these discussions. But they balk at the thought of connecting with these characters. They don't want to identify with any part of an amoral society that doesn't seem to care about anything; they don't want to relate to characters who are selfish and disengaged. "What then," I ask, "kept you reading? If you didn't like the plot and you've put down other books by great writers and you're tired of these themes because they seem so hopeless, why did you keep reading?" They can't answer, so we discuss the characters. We start with Nick. He's almost immediately likeable except that he's so confident in his own ability to be objective and he proceeds to spend the novel evaluating and weighing the character of everyone he meets... he disapproves of Gatsby, he's annoyed by Daisy and Tom, and he's intrigued by Jordan because she's so pretty even though she's dishonest about everything. He's on the sidelines, observing, being personally pulled along by the drama of everyone around him. Nick is that part of us that wants to be open-minded and aware, but can't help but be judgmental. He's the easiest to relate to both because he tells the story and because he represents the clearest balance of both positive and negative qualities. However, both because of and in spite of these attributes, Nick's character alone is not quite enough to keep us reading. And so, there's Daisy and Tom: Daisy the socialite and Tom the arrogant, wealthy jock. They're easy to pigeonhole into stereotypical roles so we don't have to really examine them and we, like the narrator, can simply sit back and judge, grateful we're so much better in our humble lives of depth instead of wealth. And yet, we're oddly compelled. Daisy's bored and rich and oblivious to anyone's needs but her own. Thompson | 27 But she pulls with her eyes, the tilt of her head, her voice that makes her listener believe the two of them share their own private, glorious world. Daisy loves whoever is easy and convenient and making her feel alive right now. We hate her. We hate her because she's shallow and we question her sincerity at every turn. "But how many of you," I ask, because I wonder about this for myself, "prefer to be with the people who like you best? How many of you have moved or had a friend move or simply gone into a new circle and whoever was once your 'very best friend' is replaced by another "very best friend?' How many of you have taken an easy class because you don't feel like working? How many of you are cruel without meaning to be simply because you can't care enough today?" Daisy married Tom - the easy choice because he was a part of her society (do we make those choices about our friends and spouses?). She married Tom: a man rushing to find the thrill of the game at which he'd once excelled; a man constantly looking for some injustice to discuss (not to correct, just to pontificate about) because he needs confrontation; a man who wants the people around him to admire him; a man who is careless with what he has because he's not sure of what he wants. "Oh, crap," a kid in the back says. "We are kinda like that." There's Myrtle ("Who names a person Myrtle?" someone inserts), insecure and craving attention, making poor choices because she's unhappy. There's Wilson, asking for favors because his business is struggling and trying to remain oblivious that the one he loves doesn't love him back. There's Jordan, a gossipy woman who is drawn to both drama and depth but cheats to get ahead. How often do we make poor decisions because of our insecurities? When was the last time we considered our situation one deserving of a favor? And how often do we cheat - on little things that are hardly noticed? 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature By now, the class is kind of divided - there are the kids who are nodding along, the kids who keep inserting questions and doubts, and a few kids who've lost interest and think I don't notice their quiet chatting or texting. I'm about to move on when someone says, "But what about Gatsby? How are we like Gatsby?" Gatsby provides somewhat of a conundrum for this hypothesis, largely because he seems so unknowable. Maxwell Perkins, the "voice and literary conscience" of Scribners when The Great Gatsby was published, offered - in the midst of immense praise - one primary criticism of the book: "Gatsby is somewhat vague. The reader's eyes can never quite focus upon him, his outlines are dim" (Scribner 200). This is the problem and also much of the reason students feel lured forward through the text - while Daisy obviously draws in her prey, Gatsby does so with his mystery. And yet... here's a guy who worked hard to create a better life for himself - until he found someone on whom to pin the image of what he wanted. Then, he moved from working hard to doing whatever it took. Here was a man with such faith in his image of what would be that he failed to see what was, a friendly man with no friends destroyed by his almost naive faith in an impossible dream. My students throw out descriptions of Gatsby - and we work our way around to a sort of conclusion. With most of the other characters, Fitzgerald identifies aspects of our personalities we don't like - greed, selfishness, arrogance, indifference, judgment, insecurity, and even laziness. But Gatsby more deeply represents what we fear - that there are parts of ourselves we don't really and will never really know; that we are so blinded by a few moments that we miss the picture of our lives; that we will sacrifice our conscience and our lives in the pursuit of a vision that never was and never can be. Thompson | 27 The Great Gatsby pulls us, lures us, and intrigues us through its pages because it's great literature by a great writer about the great American dream. But it stays with us, and students find themselves reading in spite of themselves because, like our morbid curiosity in car accidents or lurid gossip, we are given the horrific vision brought to a glaring real- ness of the pieces of our character we don't quite want to examine and the parts of our soul we hope no one sees. 581A Spiritual Journey through Literature Thompson | 27 Chapter Three: Live on Purpose with Purpose Reading Henry David Thoreau 0) To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust (Walden 13). "He's kinda right and kinda wrong," a student says after reading excerpts of a couple of Thoreau's essays. This is the pervading approach to any writing that proposes to the reader a philosophy or perspective about how we ought to live and function within our society. The reaction stems from a mix of influences: these are teenagers, bent on classification and understanding, at an age when so much about the world is already ambiguous enough and they simply need to know where things fit; these are children from a comfortable, conservative suburb with one dominant religion and many of them have been taught—since before they learned to read—to say, "I know the church is true," and therefore right and wrong will strictly align with "truth" as understood through the particular lens of their particular religion; and these are students of a system with large class sizes and a curriculum that has been asking them to quickly take in an issue, make a snap judgment, and then defend that judgment with whatever reasoning or evidence is immediately at hand regardless of its logical connection. I understand the response; I've probably inadvertently fostered this kind of "right or wrong" thinking in my own teaching; I do, after all, ask students to defend, challenge, or qualify positions authors and 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature politicians take. And while I cringe a little inside when a student quickly dismisses portions of Thoreauvian philosophy because they fall on his side of "wrong," I am guilty of exactly this kind of reaction myself when reading, say, an editorial in the newspaper. However... "Ah, ah, ah," I say to my student and nod my head up toward our class motto. Stenciled above the white board, Francis Bacon admonishes: "Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider." The quote is from his essay "On Studies" and it's one of the first pieces my students read. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," the kid responds. "I know. I know. 'Weigh and consider.'" I smile, nod, and ask him to consider the audience, the time, the writing, the purpose. He turns back to his group, sighing because I called him out. I am discouraged when my students discount great writing or alternative perspectives or new information simply because these ideas don't fit with their world view. But I forgive them quickly - this need to classify, to define, to place an idea on the side of right and wrong is human. It goes beyond our cultural influences and is, I believe, a part of the fundamental human psyche. And I am often guilty of instant judgments and classifications myself; I ask my students to move beyond the initial impression, to curb their need to hastily categorize and judge because I wish I had practiced this skill more, because I need to practice it more now. And because, when they do finally determine where to place an idea along the spectrum of their own perspective about how and why the world works, I hope they've learned to make that determination with deliberate consideration. And so, I ask them to read Thoreau - and Emerson and Whitman and Dickinson, some Hawthorne and Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Walker and Dillard and Hughes, and political speeches from Lincoln and Gore and Bush and Kennedy. I ask them to read Thompson | 27 pieces I know will have ideas their culture has told them to agree with ("That government is best which governs least") alongside those that will made them uncomfortable ("Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind"). I ask them to consider what all this means and why before they give an opinion about what it all means to them. It is difficult and uncomfortable and only partially successful—this experiment with weighing and considering; this goal of searching rather than finding; this desire to learn instead of to know. But as I re-read the most commonly excerpted pieces of Thoreau's writing, I find that while on the surface, he promotes a nearly impossible way of living, at its core and through his example, his is a message of exploration and consideration. My experience with Thoreau has been, until recently, the fairly piecemeal set of reading typical of a high school English teacher. I know excerpts of "Civil Disobedience" and a few choice paragraphs from the chapters "Where I Lived and What I Lived For" and "Conclusion" from Walden quite well; I teach an in-depth analysis of five paragraphs of "Walking." But it occurred to me, as I was telling these teenagers that they needed to "live deliberately," "deep," and "suck out all the marrow of life," that I was not following my own advice. (Also, this summer one of my pleasure reads involved main characters who kept having conversations about Thoreau and Walden and it made me more curious.) So, I decided that piecemeal wasn't enough and moved beyond the high school canon. And I find that what was once inspiring became daunting. Thoreau is vehement, impassioned, allusive, demanding: If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature worse than the evil, but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn ("Civil Disobedience" 234). To live by this standard is to live in constant awareness of justice and right, to - in spite of what I've been trying to get my students to do in terms of considering rather than concluding - judge and to act. I had, until my more thorough reading of Thoreau, been pretty pleased with my personal spiritual progress. I'd been gradually inspired by other writers to be more open to my inner voice, which necessarily means a conundrum between trusting what I have believed and understood in the past and trusting what that voice is telling me now, to be open to the possibility that I'd been wrong before, I may be wrong now, and what is most important is that I try, that I listen intently, openly, willingly, trustingly, to my own voice and intuition. Already, this was no easy insight, no simple fix of "ah, hah! Now I know how to live happily." Life became rather more challenging as it occurred to me that I consider with honest introspection what is true and how I ought to live today to achieve my highest potential. I was happy with this perspective and felt challenged enough. But then Thoreau dares his reader to do more. His voice is strident, convicted, full of right, and I am engulfed with the idea that I must live by some set of pre-determined unshakable values, some sense of right and true and should because my nature is to be selfish and lazy, to seek the easy way, and I must fight that nature with some conviction that goes beyond myself. Thoreau's writing asks me to think not only of what is true for me, but of what is best for my community, my country; he demands a constant kind of busy-ness, of discovery - a life of purposeful activity Thompson | 27 suffused with intensity and the defense of the moral recognition of the value of every soul. It is not enough to learn my voice; I must energetically promote a world of equality, justice, and understanding. Thoreau's abolitionist writings and conviction force me to consider the history of slavery and oppression, the tendency of greed, fear, and power to overrule and corrupt any sense of justice or morality. I don't remember when I learned about slavery, but ever since whichever history class or children's book taught me about it, I've been ashamed of America's past, embarrassed and appalled. I've read the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs and have encouraged my students to do the same. I watched Roots and cried. And yet, I've never felt any sort of direct responsibility for this history. My family genealogy goes back enough generations for me to know that those of us who were in America in the 19th century were working class Northerners who came from the small farms or trades of a hodgepodge of European countries. And so, I felt that while slavery was evil and that discrimination was and is wrong, I was not accountable. But then one day I heard a news story on the radio and the commentator said something about how Northerners blissfully put sugar in their coffee, supporting slavery with their purchases while often condemning it from their comfortable homes. And I remember the recipes that have been passed down through my grandmothers. And I remember that when injustices occur, when wrongs happen, all of us are implicated. Naturally, I share this insight with my students. I don't want to be the only one feeling newly guilty today. And I ask them to think about their day: consider what you eat, what you wear, what you use. Where does your food come from? Who grows it? How are the people who grow it treated? What is in the soil? How are the animals treated? Where do your clothes come from? Did you hear about the recent fire in the garment 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature factory in Bangladesh? Where and how are your electronics made? Did you drive to school? Where did your car come from, how was the fuel that propels that car produced? What is the immediate and long term effect of your decisions to the environment, to animals, to children in other countries, to the future children of this country? Students' eyes widen a bit more with each question; they squirm in their chairs. I'm glad they're uncomfortable because I am uncomfortable. Perhaps it's going too far with Thoreau's message, but I don't think so. He meant to make us uncomfortable, to force us to question the content and quality of our lives, to ask: How do our actions impact our world? (2) Our whole life is startlingly moral There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails (Walden 149). To begin my classroom unit on Transcendentalism, we discuss the idea of civil disobedience - it is not an original approach, but my kids are sixteen and familiar enough with the concept of rebellion that it seems effective. Each year, I find more and more resources - more and more people who've connected their own personal philosophy to that of Thoreau. I find YouTube videos, news stories, editorials, documentaries, and current movements, all invoking Thoreau's name. My favorite thing about teaching Thoreau is the variety of purposes for which his work is used as inspiration and justification. His "causes" include: tax evasion for moral grounds; isolationism; environmentalism; peaceful resistance to ''unfair" laws (and the different ways people perceive "unfair" is a fun discussion); feminism; civil rights; gun rights; gun control; Thompson | 27 limited government; compassionate government; regulation; de-regulation - it seems that whatever the philosophy, Thoreau's words support the cause. When I lead the discussion correctly, a student or two will recognize how similar this is to how the Bible and other religious texts have been used throughout history. "Much has been written on Thoreau's landmark essay on 'Civil Disobedience,'" writes Shannon Riley in her essay "The Legacy of Resistance to Civil Government." "Indeed it has been used as a model for modern day leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Ghandi. [Dr. King's philosophy]... was clearly Thoreauvian in nature...And, like Thoreau, Gandhi was constantly seeking the higher truth with regard to man's relationship in the universe." Peter Gilmour calls Walden and "Civil Disobedience" "giants of American letters and ...spiritual classics," adding that "although Thoreau espoused no formal religion, his sense of the divine was mighty, his outrage at unjust war was pronounced, and his concern for the disadvantaged was magnanimous." In an essay about the "fight against the fossil fuel industry," Wes Stephenson calls on Thoreau as a guide, a prophetic example, citing other examples of invoking Thoreau to promote a cause. "For many ... activists, engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience is a sacred American tradition," he says, citing the executive director of the Sierra Club who declared, "We'll be following in the hallowed footsteps of Thoreau, who first articulated the principles of civil disobedience" (12). Thoreau was not, of course, the first to speak of these strategies or philosophies, but his work has become a touchstone for those seeking definitions, justifications, and motivations for becoming a conscious rebel. "Action from principle," writes Thoreau in "Civil Disobedience," "the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature and does not consist wholly with anything which was." Of Walden 's reception and value, E.B. White wrote: Many think it a sermon; many set it down as an attempt to rearrange society; some think it an exercise in nature-loving; some find it a rather irritating collection of inspirational puffballs by an eccentric show-off. I think it is none of these. It seems to me the best youth's companion yet written by an American, for it carries a solemn warning against the loss of one's valuables, it advances a good argument for traveling light and trying new adventures, it rings with the power of positive adoration, it contains religious feelings without religious images, and it steadfastly refuses to record bad news (442-443). Thoreau was not unaware of his prophetic voice, nor was it developed unconsciously. Lydia Willsky, in her essay "Prophet among Rebels: Henry David Thoreau and the Creation of a Transcendentalist Bible" argues that it was intentional - that Thoreau fully "embraced the most distinctive and decidedly controversial element of 'prophethood.' Like the biblical prophets before him... Thoreau sought to produce scripture" (625). Reading Thoreau, like reading Whitman, does seem, in structure and concept, quite scriptural - not always in a positive way. Thoreau can be overly didactic; his extensive allusions to mythology and his strident tone often carry the same sort of judgment and either-or situations for which structured religions are criticized. However, Thoreau also uses the more effective methods and phrasing that makes sacred texts so powerful: he uses anecdotes, analogies and parables to teach. He is didactic, instructive, and bold. He asserts knowledge of God and the divine - although what makes him more palatable to me lately is that he does not posit that he speaks for God. Willsky Thompson | 27 characterizes Thoreau as an "exemplary prophet," - "distinguished from an ethical prophet. The exemplary prophet is an individual who, 'by his personal example, demonstrates to others the way to religious salvation,' whereas an ethical prophet speaks directly for god and 'demands obedience as an ethical duty'" (626). "I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account," Thoreau says in his first chapter of Walden - which philosophy immediately sets him apart from the "ethical prophet" of the Bible. "For, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead" (52). Thoreau as a prophet provides a voice for a different kind of scripture - '"Nature alone held the key to the truth," says Willsky, "and to date, no one had successfully written nature's Bible. Eventually, Thoreau realized, the task had been reserved for him" (634). "Will you be a reader, a student merely," asks Thoreau in Walden, "or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity" (79). Thoreau is the prophet who invites his reader to participate in the prophecy, to design her or his own future, to be inspired enough to be awake ourselves. "No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert," he says (78). Thoreau's rebellious stance on taxes, his unpopular (at the time) defense of Captain John Brown, his disgust for and fight against slavery, his respect for nature and through it, God, and his own personal sense that he had an obligation to promote his ideals - however much they may change or adjust - all make for reading that promotes urgency and provides instruction. It is writing that combines a doctrinal tone - a tone 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature with which I am well acquainted - with an endorsement of an independent spirit, which I currently crave. "If a man does not keep apace with his companions," Thoreau says in that way that implies a self-consciousness and didacticism, but... "perhaps," he continues, "it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away" (Walden 219). (3) Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly (Walden 58). The picnic bench is cool against the backs of my legs. Unfinished sandwiches prevent napkins from flying away and I keep pulling strands of hair from my cheek, tucking them behind my ear. The scent of the ocean is subtle today, but still runs through my nose, leaving a faint hint of seafood at the back of my throat. The water shifts colors - from brown to green to blue, to some odd combination of the three that remains unnamed and seems impossible to capture. The sun is hiding, as it frequently does here along the coast in Washington State. The sun is hiding, but the sky is a brilliant azure - the rich blue of fairy tales and happily-ever-afters, of pirate adventures and memories covered with sweet nostalgia. "I see a teapot," Grandma whispers in her smoky voice. I am fifteen, but I still love this game. "No, it's an elephant," Grandpa volleys back. His voice is the sound of a push lawnmower, clipping the grass, of ice cream with peanuts and chocolate sauce, of early Sunday mornings on the golf course, of raft trips that go awry. "I think it's a face," I say. "See the eye?" Thompson | 27 "A golfer," says Grandpa. "A book," says Grandma. "A forest." "A candle." "Two people kissing." "A car carrying a boat." "A tent." "A pair of socks." The clouds fluff and shift and float along. Our voices are quiet, teasing, laughing. The sun winks in and out as if embarrassed by its light. I have forgotten everything except this moment. The press of grandma's hand against my knee, the solidity of grandpa's shoulder against my head, the waves licking the sand, dropping off and carrying away, capricious in their selections - this is all there is and it is everything. Grandma, Grandpa, me, the ocean, the sand, the sky, the sun - somehow we all merge for this brief instant, content to simply be. (4) Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?" (Walden 96). As a part of the unit on Transcendentalism, students keep a journal for seven days during which time they have to spend ten minutes a day noticing one specific thing they wouldn't normally pay attention to. For ten minutes, they have to write down everything 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature they see, hear, observe or think about related to that one thing. At first, they struggle to maintain focus and see the details of what they're observing, but by the end of the week, most of them have discovered how full their lives are. I ask them to use their experience and their new familiarity with Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman and Dickinson to turn their observations into a poem. One student wrote: I saw god in the mountain As it shimmered in the dying light- I stood in the dark valley- The sun - neglecting me - I stared timidly upward- As it loomed over all - In the mountain -1 found god From the mountain he found me1 I read it over and over, humbled by the words of a sixteen year-old boy and reminded that I love teaching because it forces me to learn, and that my primary objective for my students is that they learn to be independent thinkers, aware and appreciative of their world with critical, alert minds. Thoreau was fond of parable and company and solitude - and he learned through instructing. In his chapter "Visitors" in Walden, he tells a parable of a man he meets - a "simple and natural man" over whom vice and disease seemed to have no control. He is a skilled chopper and interesting because "he was so quiet and solitary and so happy withal." For two pages, Thoreau praises the man - for his simplicity, his industry, his contentment. But then he adds: 1 Poem by Andrew Cuthbert, grade 11 student, written in the Fall of 2013 and used with permission of the author. Thompson | 27 But the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child (102). Contentment, happiness, skill and industry are all well and good, but only if we think about them, only if we learn from them. Spiritual instruction, reading, nature herself — they are all only valuable insomuch as they encourage us to grow, to develop into a being of consciousness. Trust and reverence are only worthwhile when accompanied with intelligent questioning and intentional, self-aware action. "Moral reform," says Thoreau, "is the effort to throw off sleep.. .The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?" (64). With Thoreau, however he is perceived or remembered, for me it comes to this essential point of being awake, because that is to live. And I want to be alive. 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature Thompson | 27 Interlude 0) a'wake (s-wak') Part of Speech: Verb 1. To rouse from sleep; awaken: Let her sleep; we don 7 wish to awake her. 2. To stir the interest of; excite: A trip to the beach awoke her senses. 3. To stir up (memories, for example) Part of Speech: Intransitive Verb 4. To wake up: How often does she awake in the middle of the night? 5. To become alert: She had been half-asleep, but then she awoke. 6. To become aware or cognizant: She awoke to reality. Part of Speech: Adjective 1. Conscious; not asleep: Her mind shifted, and she felt awake for the first time. 8. Vigilant, watchful: Upon arriving, she remained fully awake. Origin: Old English: awcenan, awacian, "to come out of sleep"; a merger of two Middle English verbs: 1. awcenan, "to awake, arise, originate,"; and awacian "to awaken, revive; arise; originate, spring from,"; "to be awake, remain awake" see "watch." Synonyms: attentive, aware, cognizant, observant, vigilant, aroused, roused, excited, awakened, knowing, heedful, on guard, conscious, stir up, ... alive 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature (2) "LlMlNAL. A Threshold. My body between worlds. This word returns me to my original state. 'I am water. I am water.' I am sea cells evolving to a consciousness that has pulled me upright" (Williams 17). So begins one variation of Terry Tempest Williams' meditative exploration of voice and women, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice. The collection is deeply personal, contemplative, poetic, and startling as she weaves through a connection with her mother's blank journals, the discovery of voice through nature, through experience, through acknowledgment, through understanding her mother. "Why [the] relationship to Mother and water?" she continues. "Breaking waters. We are born from what is fluid, not fixed. Water is essential. A mother is essential. The ocean as mother is mesmerizing in her power, a creative force that can both comfort and destroy" (20). (3) I am twelve years old and it is my favorite part of the day. Dinner is finished; homework is complete. My dad and I escape for an hour - to water. It is the middle of winter in Idaho, so we drive the quarter mile to my grandparents' house to swim in then- heated pool. We talk of lap times and breathing techniques until we descend into the water. And then it is silent. At first. But the water whispers as it fills my ears and brushes against my feet; my father maintains a steady pace. I do not. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe on the right. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe on the left. I count my strokes, my laps, the hours since I've been here, the hours until I'll be here again. I count forward and Thompson | 27 backward, adding and subtracting. I am comfortable in the embrace of water and the reliability of the number line. Twenty-five years later, Dad and I are swimming again. It is summer now, but I live in the desert and neither of us is ambitious enough to head out to a mountain lake. So, we repeat our ritual in the community pool across the street from my house. His pace is still steady, but slower. Mine is more confident, steady now. I do not use numbers for comfort today. Instead, I repeat the conversation he and I and my mother had last night. The one where I told them I was, finally, awake and happy and content. The one where I told them I couldn't, wouldn't, any longer participate in the religious practice of my upbringing. The conversation replays in my mind again and again as the water rushes around my body, supporting me with its weight, strengthening me through its resistance, powerful and large as I sink and rise, but not harming me because my father taught me to breathe. (4) "The voice of the sea is seductive," says Kate Chopin as she describes the moment when her most famous character, Edna Pontellier, begins to be born to herself. "Never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. "The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace" (14). This recognition of the sea's seduction comes just as "a certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her, «the light which, showing the way, forbids it" (14). 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature (5) "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." - Muriel Rukeyser "As women, we are quiet about our personal lives, especially when it comes to sex. We are quiet because there is a history of abuse and harm committed toward those who tell the truth. Marriages are shattered. Families are broken. Judgments are rendered. The woman stands alone. Our stories live underground." - Terry Tempest Williams (6) In mythology, women and water weave through stories, inextricably linked to one another as symbols of birth and death, temptation and fear, power and submission. The Lady of the Lake bestows power: through a magical sword, through mystical instruction, through calm understanding and gentle, elusive interference. The German Loreley and the Greek Sirens use their beauty as a distraction and lure sailors to their deaths among the rocks in the rivers or the sea. The Scottish Selkie was a sea lion who shed her skin to take human form. When captured by a man, she became his wife. But when she found her skin again, she returned to the sea, leaving her husband to languish and die. When scientists seek for signs of life, they look first for evidence of water. Thompson | 43 (7) Edna Pontellier is young, learning to swim, as she allows the sea to first embrace her. "But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its power, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over- confidence...a feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her soul...She would not join the groups in their sports and bouts, but intoxicated with her newly conquered power, she swam out alone" (27). The sea, the water, teaches us our strength while never relinquishing its power. It teaches us our voice while controlling it. It requires both confidence and submission - the woman's game. When Edna swims a little too far, she fears for a moment that she has over¬reached her strength; she - as women do - downplays her fear. "You were not so very far, my dear" says her husband. You were not so very strong; you were not so very brave; you have misunderstood your own experience. Let me re-cast it for you so you can see: "I was watching you" (28). (8) "Who wants to be a goddess when we can be human?" asks Terry Tempest Williams. "Perfection is disguised as control. The moment Eve bit into the apple, her eyes opened and she became free. She exposed the truth of what every woman knows: to find our sovereign voice often requires a betrayal...For a woman or a man to speak from the truth of their heart is to break taboo. The mask is removed. The snake who tempted 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature Eve to eat the forbidden fruit was not the Devil, but her own instinctive nature saying, Honor your hunger and feed yourself' (96). (9) "Think of the children." The phrase plays over in Edna's mind as she calmly embraces the sea. She thinks of the children, the product of her body, her blood, her milk, her pain. She thinks of the children, the symbol of her role, her place, her life. She thinks of the children, for whom she would sacrifice all, including her life - all, except "the essential." "Good-by," she says, as her arms and legs grow tired, as exhaustion presses upon her. "Good-by - because I love you" (109). And as Edna swims out into the sea, she is the Selkie, reclaiming her skin. She is Eve, honoring her hunger. She is the woman, speaking through her eloquent, eternal, silence. Thompson | 27 Chapter Four: Trust Your Gut Reading Charlotte Bronte a) I returned to my book (Jane Eyre 6). I sat curled up in a corner of my basement. We'd made it a makeshift bedroom by tacking quilts to the concrete walls, bringing in a faded braided rug and some dressers, and using up the exposed underbelly of the stairs for our shoe closet. My sister and I civilized the room by adding posters to the walls - posters of horses and soft-toned landscapes. And, of course, there was our "church wall." The wall featured a sampler of a torch (I'd cross-stitched it) proclaiming: "We'll bring the world His Truth"; a toll- painted wood block of a home stating: "Families are Forever"; various do-good adds ("It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice") we'd cut out of our religious magazines; and pictures of temples and Christ. It made us feel good to surround ourselves with pretty little things and they hung haphazardly, taped carefully on the quilted walls. I huddled in the corner of this little sanctuary one summer afternoon, avoiding the heat and discovering, to my great delight, the romance and gothic righteousness of Jane Eyre. I was twelve years old and in love with all things romantic and tragic. I quickly fell in love with Jane for her rebellion against the standard female role of docility while still maintaining her personal sense of right and wrong and spirituality. I loved her for her plain appearance and bold thoughts. I loved her for capturing the heart of a dark and dreadfully romantic hero and loved her equally for her courage in leaving him to suit her 18 J A Spiritual Journey through Literature sense of personal morality. I loved her for not choosing the easy way, but her right way, again and again. I believe that every twelve-year-old-girl needs a heroine who reminds her that she is valuable deeply beyond her appearance and that it is not only acceptable, but essential to trust her own sense of right and wrong and to trust in her own capacity for getting through anything, regardless of popular opinion, pressure from those in authority, or the persuasion of a lover who plays at a need for love and acceptance while igniting pleasurable and exciting passions. She has the right to know that her own personal self- respect is more important than any of those forces. A couple of decades later, Jane Eyre continues to hold power over me. I re-read her story every few years; I watch almost every film version created, critical of all the parts left out or moments poorly expressed, cheering inwardly whenever the actors capture the picture my mind has seen hundreds of times. I look over my students and wonder which young lady needs Jane Eyre the most, and worry a little that once introduced, she might not quite appreciate Jane's power to affect her life. I discuss Jane philosophy while jogging with my sisters or over dinner with my friends. When I betray myself with poor choices, I think, "Jane would have done better," and when I feel stuck or confused, I often find resolve in the power of her character. (2) ...she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feeling bore me up!... I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and took a firm stand on the stool (Jane Eyre 57). Thompson | 27 The challenge that was partially responsible for inspiring Jane Eyre is repeated so often in Bronte-related literature it has become a legend: Charlotte's sisters, Emily and Anne, claimed a plain woman and an ugly man would never be compelling enough characters to carry a book. "I will prove to you that you are wrong. I will show you a heroine as small and as plain as myself who shall be as interesting as any of yours," Charlotte replied (Gordon 132). And while critics may debate over which of the sisters wrote the best novel, the public has consistently proven Charlotte Bronte right. We will read, defend, adore, adapt, re-read, promote, and re-read again, a story of a plain woman. It is impossible to know exactly how many copies of Jane Eyre have been sold since its initial printing in 1848, but it has never gone out of print and in 2003, Penguin Publishing - one of many imprints - said that it had sold more than 500,000 copies in the previous 50 years (McCauley). Jane Eyre is reincarnated into more film versions than even Austen's beloved Pride and Prejudice (McGrath) and it's a "must read" on lists for high school students, romance readers, and those looking for "most influential books" or "best books ever." In 2006, "World Day Book survey respondents named Jane Eyre number three of the Top Ten Books You Can't Live Without,' placing it ahead of the Bible and Harry Potter1 (Goska).