Morning Star

Most people encounter Henry David Thoreau’s Walden as a book about simplicity.

We remember the cabin at Walden Pond, the rejection of materialism, the call to live deliberately, and perhaps the famous declaration that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Thoreau has become, in the popular imagination, something of a patron saint of minimalism and self-reliance.

But after finishing Walden, I found myself wondering whether we have missed something deeper.

What if Walden is not primarily a book about living simply, but about learning to see?

What if Thoreau’s stripping away of possessions, distractions, conventions, and the expectations of society is ultimately a spiritual exercise—a way of clearing the ground so that man might perceive a reality that has been there all along?

And what if, beneath Thoreau’s Transcendentalism, there is something remarkably close to the Christian idea that we must humble ourselves, let go of the things that separate us from God, and become receptive to the divine?

We Are Too Easily Pleased

Near the end of Walden, Thoreau asks:

“Why level downward to our fullest perception always, and praise that as common sense.”

It is a remarkable criticism of his contemporaries. Thoreau was not satisfied with accepting the average as the measure of what a human being should think, desire, or accomplish. He complained repeatedly about people who read little, thought little, and devoted themselves almost entirely to the practical concerns of daily life.

More than a century later, C. S. Lewis would make a remarkably similar observation.

In The Weight of Glory, Lewis writes that human beings are “far too easily pleased.” His argument is that we settle for small pleasures and small ambitions because we cannot imagine the greater reality for which we were made.

Thoreau seems to be making much the same accusation.

We mistake what is ordinary for what is ultimate.

We accept the boundaries of our culture, our possessions, our occupations, and our social expectations, and then call those boundaries “common sense.”

But why?

Why should the limitations of ordinary life determine the limits of human possibility?

Thoreau’s answer is to step away.

Not necessarily to run away from the world, but to become quiet enough to see it differently.

“Sell Your Clothes and Keep Your Thoughts”

One of Thoreau’s most provocative statements comes near the end:

“Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.”

It is easy to read this as another expression of his eccentric rejection of civilization. But the sentence contains something much more interesting.

“Sell your clothes” is a command to let go of the external things by which we define ourselves. Possessions, status, appearance, reputation, social expectations—all of the things that tell us who we are supposed to be.

But then Thoreau says:

“Keep your thoughts.”

The answer to materialism is not emptiness. It is interiority.

Strip away the unnecessary things, but preserve the inner life.

And then comes the word that is so easy to overlook:

God.

Thoreau does not say that having less will make you self-sufficient. He says, in effect, that you can relinquish your dependence upon society because there is a higher source of dependence.

This brings us to the heart of humility.

Humility is often misunderstood as thinking poorly of ourselves. But perhaps humility is something much simpler and much more difficult:

Acknowledging that we cannot do it alone.

As long as I believe that I can ultimately provide for myself, control my life, determine my future, and make myself whole through my own efforts, I have little reason to surrender.

But when I acknowledge my limitations, something changes.

I become receptive.

I can finally say:

I need help.

And ultimately:

I need God.

Perhaps that is what Thoreau means when he says:

“Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.”

It is a stunning metaphor.

Darkness does not create the stars. It allows us to see them.

In the same way, humility does not make us smaller. It removes the glare of our own self-sufficiency so that we can see what is greater than ourselves.

The Human Insect

There is another passage in the conclusion that makes this idea of humility even more striking.

Thoreau describes an insect crawling among the pine needles, trying to conceal itself from him. He watches the tiny creature attempting to hide and wonders why it should “cherish those humble thoughts” and hide its head from him, when he might perhaps be its benefactor and impart some “cheering information” to its race.

Then he turns the thought upon himself:

“I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.”

It is one of the most beautiful moments in Walden.

Thoreau is suddenly looking at himself from the insect’s perspective.

The insect is living within a reality larger than it can perceive. It does not understand the human being standing above it. It cannot comprehend his intentions, his knowledge, or the possibilities that exist beyond its tiny world.

And Thoreau realizes that he may be in precisely the same position.

He is the human insect.

There may be a greater Intelligence standing over him just as he stands over the insect.

And notice what he calls that Intelligence:

the “Benefactor.”

Not merely an observer. Not merely a power. A Benefactor.

The image is therefore both humbling and hopeful. Thoreau recognizes his own smallness, but that smallness does not leave him alone in an indifferent universe. The Intelligence above him is also a source of goodness.

The insect does not know that it is being watched.

Perhaps we don't either.

This may be one of Thoreau's most profound expressions of humility: the realization that our perception of reality is itself limited. We see only what we are capable of seeing. There may be an Intelligence, a providence, a reality standing over us that we cannot yet comprehend.

The little insect cannot see the man.

The human insect may not yet see God.

The Life Within Us

Near the very end of Walden, Thoreau writes:

“The life in us is like the water in the river.”

He then tells the remarkable story of an insect emerging from a piece of wooden furniture more than sixty years after the tree from which the wood came had been cut.

The insect had apparently remained hidden within the wood for decades.

And Thoreau uses this strange event to contemplate resurrection and immortality. He explicitly asks:

“Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this?”

That is one of the most strikingly spiritual moments in the entire book.

Something that appeared dead was not necessarily dead.

Something invisible was still alive.

Something hidden for generations could suddenly emerge into the light.

Thoreau does not attempt to prove resurrection through the insect. Instead, he allows nature to become a kind of parable. The world itself seems to contain mysteries that challenge our ordinary understanding of life and death.

What if what we call death is not the whole story?

What if life can exist beyond what our senses can presently perceive?

Christianity makes a much greater claim than Thoreau does: that death is not the end because Christ has passed through death and emerged alive.

But Thoreau’s meditation seems to stand at the edge of that mystery.

He is asking us to be humble about what we think we know.

The visible world may not be the whole world.

The Invisible Boundary

Then comes perhaps the most famous passage in Walden:

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams…”

Those words have become almost a secular proverb. They are printed on posters, quoted in commencement speeches, and used as an encouragement to pursue one’s ambitions.

But the words that follow are even more interesting.

Thoreau says that such a person will pass an “invisible boundary” and will live with the “license of a higher order of beings.”

Why does Thoreau suddenly introduce an invisible boundary?

The phrase suggests that something happens when a person begins to live differently—when he refuses to accept the ordinary limitations imposed upon him.

There is a crossing.

A veil, perhaps.

On one side is ordinary perception: possessions, status, work, convention, fear, and the expectations of society.

On the other is something Thoreau can only describe as a higher order.

The boundary is invisible because the reality beyond it cannot be measured in the ordinary ways.

This is one of the reasons I think Walden can be read as a profoundly spiritual book.

Thoreau repeatedly suggests that the visible world points beyond itself.

Nature is not merely scenery. It is revelation.

Silence is not merely the absence of noise. It creates the possibility of hearing.

Simplicity is not merely frugality. It creates space.

Humility is not self-contempt. It is the darkness in which the heavenly lights become visible.

And death itself may not be the end.

The World Behind the World

Perhaps this is why the final pages of Walden feel so different from the book we think we know.

Thoreau begins with a man building a small cabin in the woods.

But he ends by contemplating immortality.

He begins by asking how little a person actually needs.

He ends by asking how much reality there may be beyond what we can see.

He criticizes a society obsessed with possessions and practical concerns, but his deeper criticism seems to be that we have become spiritually inattentive.

We are too easily satisfied.

We read too little.

We think too trivially.

We accept the ordinary as though it were the whole of reality.

And perhaps the purpose of going into the woods is not ultimately to escape society at all.

It is to escape the noise long enough to discover what is true.

That is where Thoreau unexpectedly meets C. S. Lewis.

Lewis warned that we are “far too easily pleased.” Thoreau asks why we should “level downward” and call that common sense. Both men recognize the same danger: human beings can become so accustomed to small things that we lose our desire for what is greater.

And perhaps the greatest danger is not that we possess too much.

It is that we desire too little.

Thoreau’s solution is to strip away.

Strip away the possessions.

Strip away the expectations.

Strip away the noise.

Strip away the need for approval.

Strip away the illusion of self-sufficiency.

And then, finally, strip away the certainty that the visible world is all there is.

What remains?

A human being standing in the darkness.

And perhaps, if Thoreau is right, that is precisely when the heavenly lights become visible.

The stars were there all along.

We simply had to become humble enough to see them.

Morning Star

And then Thoreau gives us his final image:

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”

It is easy to hear this simply as an exhortation to wake up and live more fully. But after everything that has come before, the words seem to carry a larger possibility.

There is more day to dawn.

The light we presently know may not be the fullness of light.

The reality we presently perceive may not be the fullness of reality.

Even the sun—the greatest light we know in this visible world—is described as merely a morning star, a sign that something greater is coming.

Perhaps that is the true meaning of awakening in Walden.

Not merely waking up early.

Not merely living deliberately.

Not merely escaping materialism.

But becoming awake to the possibility that there is more.

More life.

More light.

More reality.

More day.

And perhaps, beyond the invisible boundary, the presence of the great Benefactor and Intelligence who has been standing over us all along.

The human insect simply has to become awake enough to see Him.

The morning star is already shining.

We just have to open our eyes.