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Join us for a discussion with local author Richard Higgins about his new book, Thoreau’s God, which explores Henry David Thoreau’s spirituality, his belief in our innate spiritual abilities, his perception of God in nature, and his sense of the sacred in the ordinary.

Thoreau was a harsh critic of “respectable” Christianity in his day, but he was religious to the bone and had a profound sense of the holy. Richard presents Thoreau as a religious thinker who tried to separate the universal religious impulse from its 19th-century institutional context. In essence, Thoreau was a mystic who, while firmly moored to the earth, was on a quest to commune with a divine mystery that was both immanent in the natural world and transcendent. He called this illimitable presence many names, but he often called it God. Thoreau’s eclectic, experiential spirituality is resonating with spiritual seekers in America today.

Richard Higgins is a former staff writer at the Boston Globe and the author or editor of four books, including Thoreau and the Language of Trees. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Century, and American Scholar.