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"Thoreau's deep religious sensibility was a central thread in his life and thought. Despite his scathing criticism of organized religion, Thoreau had a profound sense of the holy. In neglecting this deep vein in Thoreau, we miss an essential part of who he was. Thoreau's God approaches Thoreau's religion as a riddle rather than as an oxymoron, as it is sometimes assumed to be. His religious sensibility, Richard Higgins shows, was not a compilation of beliefs but a set of internal possibilities and choices about how to live, what to notice, and what to love. This book explores the paradox of Thoreau's love for this world and his yearning for the unseen and unheard. Although his views were iconoclastic, Thoreau's experience of the divine in nature was often rapturous. He disavowed discursive theology, but he wrote about and sought communion with a mystery at the heart of the universe that was at once present in nature and yet transcendent. He called this illimitable presence many names, but he often called it God. Rather than a fixed belief, however, Thoreau's theism was contingent, never final, more of a moving toward than an arriving at. Thoreau's God was an infinite, wild, life-giving presence manifest in the natural world. Only by understanding Thoreau's particular conception of the divine and his relationship to it will we be able to understand the Thoreau of Walden as well as his profound influence on the American religious landscape"--
About the author
Richard Higgins is a former staff writer at the
Boston Globe and the author or editor of four books, including
Thoreau and the Language of Trees. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in the
New York Times,
Washington Post,
Christian Century, and
American Scholar.
