Emerson everywhere

In his original "read a book of the Bible for twenty days" challenge, Joe Carter quotes James M. Gray, who writes,

The first practical help I ever received in the mastery of the English Bible was from a layman.... He had gone into the country to spend the Sabbath with his family on one occasion, taking with him a pocket copy of Ephesians, and in the afternoon, going out into the woods and lying down under a tree, he began to read it; he read it through at a single reading, and finding his interest aroused, read it through again in the same way, and, his interest increasing, again and again. I think he added that he read it some twelve or fifteen times, “and when I arose to go into the house,” said he, “I was in possession of Ephesians, or better yet, it was in possession of me, and I had been ‘lifted up to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus’ in an experimental sense in which that had not been true in me before, and will never cease to be true in me again.”

"It was in possession of me," says Gray's friend, and it's a fitting way to describe what happens when you read a text--any meaningful text--for twenty days straight.

Consider how "Self-Reliance" currently dominates my thinking. I watch a Sopranos episode where Carmela visits Paris, all the while remembering Emerson's observation, "Traveling is a fool's paradise... [the tourist] carries ruins to ruins."

I read Pseudo-Polymath on the lack of modern wisdom, all the while thinking, "Society never advances." After all,

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind.

I pass the panhandler in the Santa hat, and wonder if he is my poor. I doubt that I can absolve me to myself. I worry that my goodness has no edge to it, and that I am false in all particulars. (I have not yet dreamed of Emerson, or in Emersonian, but I imagine such dreams are not far off.)

In short, I have become "like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors," and my tutor is Emerson.

an Emerson a day for twenty days

As a form of "benign brainwashing," I decided to take up a modified form of Joe Carter's reading challenge. Carter's original recommendations, as applied to my task:

"1. Choose shorter books and work up to longer ones."
I chose Emerson's "Self-Reliance," since it's not terribly long (though it's longer than it should have been, in retrospect), it's rhetorically powerful, and it's preachy.

"2. Read at your normal pace."
Most of the time I did. There were a couple days, though, where I speed-read, due to time constraints. "Self-Reliance" is short, but it's still a lot longer than, say, the book of Galatians.

"3. Skip the commentaries."
I avoided the endnotes, and didn't read any other analyses, historical or otherwise.

"4. Stick with the process."
Did it. It wasn't as much of a slog as I thought it would be. In fact, the day after I finished, I picked up the book again to revisit a couple passages. More on that later.

"5. Choose an appropriate version."
I used Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It wasn't until I picked up a different version in a different anthology that I saw the interesting changes the manuscript underwent, due to later editing by RWE. He softened some of his language over time--for example, no longer referring to certain doubters as "aged ladies."


"6. Pray."
I'm not a praying man, and it would be a bit strange to ask God (or Emerson) to open up my mind to insights from the text. Instead, I made sure I sat in a quiet place, focused carefully on the text, and resolved to take it seriously, even when I disagreed with it. (The irony of my choice was not lost on me. It would be strange to wholesale adopt the arguments of a piece that argues, "Insist on yourself: never imitate.")

"7. Begin today."
I started the day I first read Joe Carter's post (November 18), and made it all the way through, despite debate tournaments, turkey dinners, and a Canadian snow adventure.



Coming soon: I'll describe what I learned, how my outlook changed--and didn't--and why doing this with any piece of literature is potentially good and bad.

benign brainwashing: reading obsessively to change your life

Joe Carter writes,

For the one or two people who will find this useful, the four steps that will transform your worldview are:

1. Choose a book of the Bible.
2. Read it in its entirety.
3. Repeat #2 twenty times.
4. Repeat this process for all 66 books of the Bible.

I wouldn't be surprised if absorption in any sort of motivational text would change your way of thinking, and maybe even change your life. Neuronally, when you read and re-read, you're establishing patterns of activity that will quite literally reshape connections in your brain--which, in the glorious feedback loop of behavior, will reshape your responses in the future.

So, I'm taking up Carter's challenge, and reading and re-reading (and re-reading) Emerson's "Self-Reliance" for twenty days straight. I'll report back when I'm finished.