Thoreau's God
Format:Hardback
Publisher:The University of Chicago Press
Publishing:19th Nov '24
£16.00
This title is due to be published on 19th November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Meditative reflections on the great spiritual seeker’s deeply felt experience of the divine.
Henry David Thoreau’s spiritual life is a riddle. Thoreau’s passionate critique of formal religion is matched only by his rapturous descriptions of encounters with the divine in nature. He fled the church only to pursue a deeper communion with a presence he felt at the heart of the universe. He called this illimitable presence many names, but he often called it God.
In Thoreau’s God, Richard Higgins invites seekers—religious or otherwise—to walk with the great Transcendentalist through a series of meditations on his spiritual life. Thoreau offers us no creed, but his writings encourage reflection on how to live, what to notice, and what to love. Though his quest was deeply personal, Thoreau devoted his life to communicating his experience of an infinite, wild, life-giving God. By recovering this vital thread in Thoreau’s life and work, Thoreau’s God opens the door to a new understanding of an original voice in American religion that speaks to spiritual seekers today.
“Thoreau’s God is the most subtle and probing assessment yet of the many senses in which this emphatic but elusive thinker must be understood as a deeply religious person.” -- Lawrence Buell, author of 'Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently'
“Thoreau was a practical man, but he was also in some sense a mystic—no one has ever been more open to the world around him. This fascinating book tries to understand Thoreau’s sense of the divine, which in some ways very much prefigures the unorthodox syncretism of our day.” -- Bill McKibben, author of 'The End of Nature'
“If you have ever felt lost in this world of fractured faith, then pick up this book and let Higgins take you on a walk with one of America’s most profound and thoughtful religious writers: Henry David Thoreau. It won’t be an easy path, for Thoreau’s God lives in no church but out in a world of paradoxes. And Thoreau insisted that even the best of books can only point the way, through words poetic enough to say what cannot be said: that true religion lies not in what you profess, but in how you live. Higgins shows us a mind and heart at work during a troubled time, a fellow human being knocking at the door of God and hearing an answer that guided him for life.” -- Laura Dassow Walls, author of 'Henry David Thoreau: A Life'
ISBN: 9780226827308
Dimensions: 216mm x 140mm x 28mm
Weight: 399g
224 pages