Every year, the New Bedford Whaling Museum hosts a Moby-Dick marathon, where Herman Melville’s entire novel is read aloud. I went over on my lunch hour, and this is what I saw and heard….
(You’ll hear the voices of Scott Lang, mayor of New Bedford, and Barney Frank, our representative to Congress, among others.)
2:56
Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a Unitarian minister before he became famous for his writing and lecturing. When he was a minister, he preached for some months to the Unitarian congregation in New Bedford. So this morning, as a kind of historical re-enactment, I delivered one of the sermons he preached while he was here.
It turned out to be quite a bit of fun. The sermon still sounded fresh and powerful (although I admit I choked a little on the gender-specific pronouns), and it was moving to read it aloud. For the most part, I think the congregation enjoyed it, too.
If this is the kind of thing that interests you, and you want to know more, I’ve included some historical notes about the sermon below…. Continue reading
This Sunday, I’ll be preaching one of the sermons that Ralph Waldo Emerson preached while he was in New Bedford during 1833-34. In those years, Emerson’s cousin Orville Dewey was the minister at the Unitarian church in New Bedford; but Dewey’s health had been damaged by overwork, and Emerson came to preach here while Dewey took a sabbatical to regain his health.
I knew the Concord Free Public Library had the complete four volume set of Emerson’s sermons (ed. Albert J. Frank et al., Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1989), so I drove up there this morning. I went down into the Special Collections rooms in the basement, and Leslie Wilson, the extremely knowledgeable curator and librarian of the Special Collections, got the four volumes for me.
Emerson kept a careful record of which sermons he preached in which church. Many of the sermons he preached in New Bedford appear to be among his favorites, for he preached them over and over again, sometimes as many as fourteen times. Mostly he did not write new sermons while he was here, but merely dug out sermons written originally for his church in Boston, or some other Unitarian church. But it appears that he did write sermon no. 169 (on the text Psalms 139.14) specifically for the New Bedford church; at least, this was the very first place he preached the sermon, on September 7, 1834. I decided this would be the sermon I’ll preach this Sunday.
Leslie Wilson, whom I have known for years and years, was curious what I was working on. I told her how I was going to preach one of Emerson’s sermons.
“You’ll have to cut it down,” she said.
“I know, no one wants to listen to a sermon that long these days,” I replied.
“And let’s face it, you’re not Emerson…,” she said thoughtfully.
“No, I most certainly am not!” I said emphatically.
“He was known for being an absolutely wonderful speaker,” she said. “He could say almost anything, and keep his audiences enthralled.” We both knew the old story of someone’s uneducated maid who went to hear one of Emerson’s lectures on Transcendentalism or some such obscure topic. Her employers were surprised that she would go to hear a lecture on such an esoteric subject. Ah, said the maid, but when Mr. Emerson says it I can understand it.
Emerson’s sermon no. 169 is so well written that it will stand up to even my delivery of it. Right now, I’m going through the two manuscript versions of the sermon — the earlier version which must be the one he delivered at New Bedford, and the later version that he delivered at Unitarian churches in Plymouth, Waltham, Boston, East Lexington, Concord, and at the Harvard College Chapel. It’s fascinating to see how he changed the sermon, mostly for the better, although at times the earlier version is more vigorous. But in both versions, you can sense a great writer coming into his full powers.
What must it have been to sit in the pews of the old wood-frame Unitarian church on the corner of William and Purchase Streets, and listen to Ralph Waldo Emerson preach on September 7, 1834, less than two years before he would publish his book Nature? The New Bedford church had wanted him as their minister — Orville Dewey having announced that his health would not allow his return — but Emerson got out of the offer by saying that he could not in good conscience preside at the communion table, nor offer a prayer unless he was truly moved to do so. Instead, in October, 1834, he moved to Concord and began writing in earnest.
I’m away from computer access today and tomorrow, so check for microblogging in the sidebar.
Apparently, Twitter isn’t entirely reliable about receiving and posting text messages via cell phone. From a couple of scrawled notes from my pocket, I have added now Twitter posts that didn’t get posted 11-15 through 11-17.
A tiny sliver of the new moon shone overhead. I stood at the end of State Pier not watching the sunset. Instead I watched a barge loaded down with gravel, well out in the middle of the harbor. The gray gravel on the barge shone faintly pink.
The barge was dead in the water, the tow rope between it and the tugboat slack. I could see someone at the stern of the tug doing something to the rope; then the faint sound of a big diesel engine growling, the water between the tug and the barge churned with prop wash, the barge slowly started to move forward; the person standing at the stern of the tug waved madly at the pilot house, the sound of the tug’s engine dropped, the rope went slack, the barge slowed and stopped. Some kind of readjustment of the rope. The tug’s engine rose into an audible growl again, the water churned between the barge and the tug, slowly the barge began to move behind the tug, gradually they got up to speed and headed towards the hurricane barrier.
I watched for several minutes. The pink light on the gravel got fainter, the tug’s running lights grew brighter in the gathering darkness, tug and barge grew smaller. I got bored watching them, and turned to head home. Overhead the sliver of moon shone bright silver, the sunset nothing more than a red glow on the horizon.
Carol has rented an office space on Fish Island here in New Bedford, so she has a place to show the composting toilets she imports from Sweden. The office is in a small building that sits just a few feet from the water, so Carol has a phenomenal view of the working waterfront: barges, tugboats, and other boats are often moored right outside her windows, and she has an amazing view of the waterfront from Kelley’s boatyard on the Fairhaven side, to Palmer Island lighthouse, to the ferry terminal on the New Bedford side. Because of the fantastic view, we’ve taken to calling the office the Fish Island Yacht Club.
Tonight, the Fish Island Yacht Club (FIYC) hosted the farewell party for Tugboat Captain John, who will be heading back to Haiti on Tuesday at the helm of the tugboat Chicopee. As the official chaplain of FIYC, I blessed Captain John’s journey, calling for smooth waters and fair winds all the way through the Caribbean. There were toasts, of course — another member of the Chicopee’s crew offered a toast, and one or two of John’s landlocked friends in New Bedford offered toasts.
After the toasts, John said in his singsong cadence, “I’ve been here four — no! four and a half months. I walked up today into New Bedford, and looked at how beautiful it was — the trees, all yellow.” Conrad from the salvage yard, who moved up here from the islands twenty years ago, said, “If you stayed for winter, mon, you wouldn’t think it was so pretty!” We all told John that he was leaving at the best time of year, when New England is at its prettiest, before it gets cold and miserable. “No,” he said, “I wish I came up here now, and stayed for four and a half months over the winter.” We all got kind of quiet at that; we’re going to miss Captain John.
Anyway, Annie, who owns the building up the street from us, gave John a big hug. Davison cooked up grilled vegetables and salmon and sausages on the grill. Mystic, who works on a swordfish boat, said he wished he had brought over some swordfish, but there was too much food as it was. John got in a long conversation with Dave, who works at the sewage treatment plant, while the rest of us stood outside on the deck watching the harbor change color as the sun set and the sky grew dark.
Farewell, Captain John; and I mean it about the smooth waters and fair winds.