The Gospel of the Present Moment - Reading “Walden” in a time of Covid

Everyone seems to have a reading list. Barry Andrews's list includes Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.

To Barry, reading Thoreau’s Walden in a time of Covid brings home the lessons he has to teach on what he called “the art of life.” It is one thing to read the book when all is going well. It is quite another when faced with the on-going pandemic we seem to be mired in.

Barry Andrews is a retired Unitarian minister and independent scholar who has written and lectured extensively on Transcendentalist writers, including Emerson, Thoreau and Margaret Fuller. His most recent book is Transcendentalism and the Cultivation of the Soul, published by the University of Massachusetts Press. He and his wife, Linda, live on Bainbridge Island.