Books by John Fentress Gardner

The Founding Fathers are well known in the history of the United States for building the economic and political foundations of America. But who founded cultural and spiritual America? For John Fentress Gardner, it was not until the following generation that the revolutionary principles of American cultural and spiritual life were laid down by Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.These three iconic heralds spoke powerfully, eloquently, for the spirit as it lives in America. They were, with uncanny directness, prophets of America today. In this illuminating book, their words become meditations that enable us to think their ideas anew.Melville's epic vision is of the conflict between Love and Power. "I stand for the power of the heart," he wrote. In prescient detail, he foretold "what must happen to a people who advance in both intellectuality and power, but who fail to develop the heart."Whitman, the bard of the spiritual will flowering in conscious love, answers Melville. Whitman's compassionate identification with the new world and its people was unique and complete. He embodied in himself and in his poetry his great ideal of self-determination. For Whitman, this principle was his country's special task and a compass for the "new moral American continent."In three brilliant, final chapters on Emerson, a crystalline framework is given for understanding the deepest spiritual, philosophical, and practical implications of what these heralds proposed for their country.

n this collection of essays John Fentress Gardner illuminates many challenging aspects of modern life that concern him-and concern most of us, as well. From poverty and environmental degradation to sexuality, parental discipline, and the pressures of modern life; from the further paths of knowledge to war and peace-he reveals how all these faces of life speak, and he points clearly to what they themselves ask for. In this sense, he looks directly to the future, not as a prophet, or even guide, but as one filled with wonder and hope. He looks often to Emerson; to Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and seer; and to others. But the weight of his regard falls upon the future, particularly upon the bearers of the future: today's youth. Gardner has been a teacher of youth for many years in the Waldorf private school system. He has a deep feeling for young people-not only for their masks and attitudes of the moment, but also for their deep (generally unconscious) longings, and for what happens when these are thwarted, as they often are. In one of the most impressive essays of this book, Gardner makes it startlingly clear that peace is not a true goal or attainment if it is viewed in opposition to war and conflict. For in this opposition, conflict remains. It is the third - transcending and holding the tension between conflict and quiescent peace - in which the redeeming force is found. In climbing through the heart into the Heart of hearts, is found the spiritual, true secret of Peace. There, the longing to know finds answers.