“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

    So said American author and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau in 1845. Thoreau was poised to commence living, alone and apart, on Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts.  Out of his solitary ruminations came one of the classics of American literature, On Walden Pond.  

    I read Walden for the first time over fifty years ago.  I recently had occasion to reread it.  This time I noticed, among other things, that although Thoreau did not have much interest in conventional religion, he captured, in his writings, much of its essential posture towards earthly existence.  Religion reminds us to reduce life to its most fundamental parameters, its most seminal components.  It tells us to set aside worldly distraction and focus on the deeper meanings of life, the most profound sensibilities that inhabit our present existence.

    We therefore strive to separate ourselves from the temporary and, theologically speaking, profane.  We aim to view life through a larger lens.  We look to the greater possibility.  For the greater possibility is what, for us as well as Thoreau, makes life worth living.  It is what gives existence its point.  Although Thoreau identified this possibility as Nature, I'll go him one step higher and call it that which created nature: God.

    Imagine that.

    By the way, if you can, read On Walden Pond.  It's a classic.