Dan Harper | Sermons

  • One Thing

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading was the poem “Global Warming Blues” by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie. You can hear the poet reading this poem on Youtube.

    The second reading was the poem “look at the blackbird fall” by June Jordan. This poem is available in the anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, edited by Camille T. Dungy (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2009), or in Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Copper Canyon Press, 2012).

    The third reading is usually attributed to Unitarian minister and novelist Edward Everett Hale.
    I am only one
    But still I am one.
    I cannot do everything,
    But still I can do something,
    And because I cannot do everything
    I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

    Sermon

    Right at the beginning, I should tell you that this sermon got the wrong title. I called it “One Thing,” but as you will see, a better title would have been “Ten Times One Is Ten.” I should also tell you, right up front, that while it might seem a little depressing at the beginning, this will wind up being a positive sermon.

    For the past twenty years, one of my sidelines has been doing environmental education with children and adults. Not that I’m trained in environmental education or biology, but I’ve been fortunate enough to work with, and learn from, biologists and environmental educators. The reason I wound up doing environmental education even though I wasn’t trained in it, was because I could see that humanity faces numerous ecological challenges of our own making, challenges which have prompted spiritual questioning and even spiritual crises in quite a few people.

    Let me give an example of a spiritual crisis prompted by ecological challenges. Ten years ago, I was one of the people leading a week-long ecology day camp for grades 2 through 8. We gave kids lots of opportunities to play outdoors and explore the natural world, and we even did a little citizen science with them. We also talked openly about the environmental challenges that humanity faces; we didn’t emphasize them, but we were honest with kids that humanity faced some big problems. In fact, the kids were relieved that we adults were willing to talk openly about those big problems. Children and teens are quite aware of the world’s environmental problems, but sometimes adults don’t want to talk with kids about such serious and discouraging topics.

    Toward the end of the week-long camp, while we were out walking somewhere, one of the seventh graders said to me, with a little bit of fear in her voice, “Are we going to be all right?” There were a couple of levels of meaning contained in this seemingly simple question. At an abstract level, she wanted to know if humanity was going to survive the various ecological crises we’re facing. Then at a personal level, she also wanted to know what their life was going to be like, and over the course of their life how they navigate the problems raised by global climate change, toxics in the environment, and so on. And at a spiritual level, she was facing a crisis of meaning — would she survive?

    My reply to that seventh grader was pretty much what you’d expect. I said that humanity had faced big challenges in the past, and somehow managed to come out all right. I said that in spite of the big problems we faced, I felt humanity was capable of solving those problems. In short, I tried to tell her things that would give her hope for the future.

    This exchange helped me understand the roots of the spiritual crisis many kids — and many adults — experience as we contemplate ecological problems. When we contemplate ecological problems, we wind up confronting several spiritual questions. We wind up confronting the nature of humanity — Is there some evil in humanity, some basic flaw, that has prompted us to do so much damage to other living things? Is there enough good in us to overcome the bad, so that we can solve our ecological problems? Then we wind up confronting the purpose of existence — Is it true, as some conservative Christians tell us, that the only purpose of this life is to prepare us for an afterlife? Is there some deity, or some force in the universe, that will be angered by the damage we’re doing to other living beings? And we also wind up confronting some old stories that have been told in Western culture for thousands of years, stories about how there will be an end time filled with disasters. Are those old stories true? — and before the skeptics among us say, “No of course they’re not true” — I would remind you that old stories like that can shape your behavior at an unconscious level, even if you doubt them at a conscious level. And whether or not those old stories are true, are they maybe affecting our behavior in ways that we don’t like, and maybe we want to retell those old stories so that we behave in ways we do like?

    All these are spiritual questions. They are questions that cannot be answered scientifically or logically, because they are feeling questions. Ultimately, these spiritual questions boil down to whether we feel a sense of hope for the future.

    Getting back to that seventh grader — she was more or less satisfied with the answer I gave her, but I wasn’t. I knew I had only given her a scientific and logical answer to her spiritual question, which meant that I didn’t really address her spiritual concerns. How could we address those very real spiritual questions that those kids had? After talking it over with all the adults who were running that day camp, here’s what we came up with….

    First, we decided that we needed to be more explicit about the ecological problems facing humanity. By not being specific, we made it feel as though ecological problems were huge and amorphous and beyond the capability of any one person to tackle — and when you feel powerless to address something, that can prompt a spiritual crisis. I had heard a talk given by Dr. Stuart Weiss, a Stanford-trained biologist who ran an environmental remediation company. Weiss listed five major threats to earth’s life supporting systems:

    One: Global climate change. Two: Invasive organisms, non-native plants and animals that outcompete native organisms. Three: “Toxication,” or pollution from solid wastes like microplastics, to chemical wastes like PFAS. Four: Deforestation and other land use changes that now affect three quarters of the Earth’s land area. Five: Overpopulation by humans.

    I use the acronym DOGIT to remember these — Deforestation, Overpopulation, Global climate change, Invasive species, and Toxication. Other biologists have come up with similar lists with different acronyms. The biologist E. O. Wilson used the acronym HIPPO, which stands for Habitat loss, Invasive species, Pollution, human Population, and Overharvesting. Use whatever list or acronym you prefer — the point is to get more specific about the challenges facing us.

    At the day camp, we told the campers about Stuart Weiss’s list of five major environmental challenges. Then we told them that they do not have to solve all of these challenges. All they have to do is choose one of them on which they wanted to focus their efforts. We also gave them stories about role models, people whom they could emulate who had taken on one of these big environmental challenges. So, for example, we told them about Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for starting the Green Belt Movement to help reverse deforestation in Kenya. We told them about Rachel Carson, who brought public awareness to the damage that chemical pesticides were doing to the environment. As we talked about Wangari Maathai and Rachel Carson and others, we would make it clear how each one of these people focused their efforts into straightforward and achievable projects. Wangari Maathai didn’t try to solve land use problems everywhere the world, she focused on addressing deforestation in Kenya where she lived. Rachel Carson didn’t try to tackle every kind of pollution, she focused on what she knew best, pesticides like DDT. In addition, for each one of our role models, we made sure the kids understood that these people did not work alone, but rather they worked with others to bring about positive change.

    One of the ways we reinforced this was by reciting the following short poem:

    I am only one
    But still I am one.
    I cannot do everything,
    But still I can do something,
    And because I cannot do everything
    I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

    When talking with kids, I usually attribute this poem to Unitarian minister and novelist Edward Everett Hale even though it probably wasn’t written by him. I like to attribute it to Hale because it captures the spirit of what he believed. One of Hale’s most famous novels was titled Ten Times One Is Ten. The novel begins just after the funeral of Harry Wadsworth. Ten people who had all known Wadsworth, but who had never met before, wind up telling each other stories of the good things Harry Wadsworth had done for each of them. For it turned out that Harry Wadsworth was one of those people who quietly went around doing good things for other people. Not that the good things he did were anything extraordinary — everything he did was something any one of us could have done — but he went ahead and did them, whereas all too often the rest of us don’t.

    As they sat around listening to each other’s stories of Harry Wadsworth’s good deeds, these ten people became inspired by his actions, and they wanted to continue his legacy. They wanted to form a club to carry on his legacy, but because they lived all across the country, they couldn’t have a conventional club with bylaws and meetings and so on. Instead, they decided that each of one of them would go out and do something good in the world; then they would report what they had done to the others. And, to better capture the spirit of Harry Wadsworth, they adopted the following mottos:

    “To look up and not down,
    To look forward and not back,
    To look out and not in,—
    and
    To lend a hand.”

    Since there were ten of them whose lives had been touched by Harry Wadsworth, they set themselves the goal of each touching the lives of ten more people. Now you begin to understand why the book is titled Ten Times One Is Ten. Each of those people did something good that touched the lives of ten more people, so that ten times ten becomes a hundred. Then those hundred people went on and did things to touch the lives of ten more people, until before long it ten times a million became ten million. And the good work spread from person to person, until at last the club realized that they had reached a thousand million people (ten times a hundred million is a thousand million) — which at the time the book was written, in the late nineteenth century, was the entire population of the world. As the narrator of the novel puts it: “When ten million people have determined that the right thing shall come to pass in this world, having good on their side, they will always be found to have their own way.”

    “Ten Times One Is Ten” became a bestselling novel in the late nineteenth century. The novel proved so popular that it spawned a real-world movement of “Lend-a-Hand” clubs across the United States, devoted to making the world a better place. (These nineteenth century clubs have mostly disappeared, although when I worked at the Unitarian church in Lexington twenty-five years ago they still had a Lend-a-Hand Club, and there is still a Lend-a-Hand organization in Boston.) And you can see how the Lend-a-Hand club concept sounds like that poem attributed to Edward Everett Hale:

    I am only one
    But still I am one.
    I cannot do everything,
    But still I can do something,
    And because I cannot do everything
    I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

    So even if Edward Everett Hale didn’t actually write this little poem, the anonymous author captured one of Hale’s most important teachings in a memorable form. Furthermore, Edward Everett Hale would go on to say, though you may be only one — ten times one is ten.

    Regardless of who actually wrote that poem, we taught it to the kids in the day camp. I wish we had also thought to teach them the motto of the club in Hale’s novel:

    Look up and not down,
    Look forward and not back,
    Look out and not in, and
    Lend a hand.

    Yet even though we didn’t teach them those exact words, we taught them that sentiment. Look up for solutions rather than getting pulled down by the problems. Look forward to the future rather than always looking back at the past. Don’t get trapped inside yourself, but look outwards to other people, for there is where you’ll find hope. And finally, of course — Lend a hand where you can.

    This is not to say that we ignored the very real phenomenon of “eco-grief.” “Eco-grief” is a term that I learned from a professor of environmental biology; she uses that term to describe the feelings of her college freshmen students when they realized the true magnitude of the environmental problems we face today. Eco-grief is a real phenomenon; most of us have some feelings of eco-grief. We should not dismiss eco-grief, but if we get trapped in our inward feelings of eco-grief, then nothing will change for the better. Go ahead and look in on your feelings of eco-grief, but remember to then turn and look out, and lend a hand.

    I’m making this sound like while we were running that ecology day camp, we considered all these matters ahead of time, and then implemented a carefully constructed curriculum to help kids maintain a positive attitude, so that they weren’t overwhelmed by eco-grief, so they could go out and change the world. Actually, what happened is that we made it up as we went along. We watched how the campers responded (and, if I’m honest, we watched how we adults responded), and then made adjustments on the fly. This took us several years.

    We knew we had succeeded by watching the campers. We got to a point where they didn’t have to ask us if things were going to be OK, because they already knew how they could contribute to make things better; that is, they were looking forward, and not back. I’ll tell you about two of our very obvious successes. One girl, who started out as a camper and went on to become a junior counselor, told us one year that she could not return to camp again because she had gotten a summer internship in local government working on environmental issues. Another girl who had been a camper then a junior counselor and was about to enter her senior year of high school, announced that she was applying to college programs in environmental science. We had other successes that weren’t as obvious, although they were just as successful. There was the camper who planned to become a high school history teacher, and who wanted to teach his students some of the history of environmental problems. There were the many campers who learned to love and enjoy the outdoors, and we knew they would grow up to become voters for whom environmental protection would be a priority.

    Our successes with these kids grew out of the basic principle that you do not have to solve all the environmental problems by yourself. Do the one thing that you can do, no matter how small. When you do that, see if you can touch the lives of other people. When you touch the lives of others, perhaps you will inspire them in turn to do just one thing to address our environmental challenges.

    This basic principle works for kids, and it works equally well for adults. We can begin by reminding ourselves that it is not up to us to solve all the world’s problems as isolated, solitary individuals. One person can’t do everything. But each one of us can do one thing to make the environment a little bit better. We can focus our efforts even more, to make it seem less overwhelming. We can each pick just one of the five major environmental challenges. Remember the acronym DOGIT — Deforestation, Overpopulation, Global climate change, Invasive species, Toxication. You are only one person, so you only have to concern yourself with one environmental challenge at a time. And for the one challenge with which you choose to concern yourself, you only have to do your part. If you choose to address deforestation, you could support your local land trust to protect natural habitats. If you choose overpopulation, you could support Planned Parenthood in teaching people about contraceptive choices to help reduce unwanted births. If you choose global climate change, you could help local governments in supporting renewable energy infrastructure. If you choose toxication, you could pick up trash whenever you go for a walk. Or if you choose invasive species, you could help remove invasive garlic mustard plants.

    All you have to do is one thing. And it can be a small thing. But when you do that one thing, see if you can touch the lives of others. See if you can bring joy and happiness to other people, helping them feel better about the world. Just as in Edward Everett Hale’s novel, if your one effort inspires ten others, then ten times one is ten; ten times ten is a hundred; ten times a hundred is a thousand; and so on until we reach eight billion people.

    I know this sounds hopelessly idealistic. I know it sounds like pie in the sky. But from my experience with that ecology summer camp, I’ve seen how eminently practical it can be. It is practical because when we inspire each other, we give each other hope. And when we give each other hope, we free ourselves — and we free our children and grandchildren — to make the world a better place….

    Look up and not down,
    Look forward and not back,
    Look out and not in, and
    Lend a hand.

  • Three Cohasset Patriots

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading is from “A Narrative History of Cohasset,” written in 1898 by Victor Bigelow:

    The battle of Concord and Lexington on April 19, 1775, exploded the pent-up fury of a myriad of yeomen throughout the colonies.

    When the news reached Cohasset nearly every man in the town able to bear arms was ready to spring into battle. Thomas Lothrop, who had already served in the province wars with a lieutenant’s rank, hastened to the scene of bloodshed, where he was soon commissioned a major.

    Of others who seized this first opportunity for martial promotion was probably James Hall, who afterwards became an aide to General Washington.

    There were doubtless other young men who did not wait for the formation of a company to march, but started at once for the seat of war, because they had no family responsibilities to keep them at home.

    The whole town was trembling with excitement, and a town meeting was immediately called to convene on the twenty-eighth day of the month. They voted to lay in a stock of corn — five hundred bushels — because food might soon be sadly needed if the war should rage. They also voted to buy one hundredweight of gunpowder, and five hundred flints for the old flintlock guns which had been used by the militia of the town since the beginning.

    The men who swarmed about the church that day on the Common may be imagined from the muster roll of [fifty-six] men who enlisted within a few days.

    The second reading is from the poem “Concord Hymn,” written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837 to commemorate the Battle of Concord.

    By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
    Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
    Here once the embattled farmers stood
    And fired the shot heard round the world.

    The foe long since in silence slept;
    Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
    And Time the ruined bridge has swept
    Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

    On this green bank, by this soft stream,
    We set today a votive stone;
    That memory may their deed redeem,
    When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

    Spirit, that made those heroes dare
    To die, and leave their children free,
    Bid Time and Nature gently spare
    The shaft we raise to them and thee.

    Sermon

    It’s Patriot’s Day, that obscure Massachusetts holiday when the Red Sox play a home game, the Boston Marathon is run, and sometimes we get an extra day to file our taxes. But of course the real purpose of Patriot’s Day is to allow us to commemorate the start of the American Revolution, right here in our state on April 19, 1775. In honor of Patriot’s Day, I’d like to tell you stories of three Revolutionary War heroes and heroines, all of whom were part of our congregation. These are stories of how ordinary people lived through unbelievably hard times: hostile war ships right off the coast of Cohasset; men going away to war and never being heard of again; food shortages and not enough people to work the fields. And one of the questions that I’ll ask, but won’t be able to fully answer, is how the people in those days found the resilience and courage to survive hard times.

    Persis Tower Lincoln Hall

    I’ll begin with Persis Tower, the daughter of Daniel Tower and Bethia Nichols. Her family was firmly aligned with the Patriot cause. When Persis was 14 years old, her older brother Abraham took part in the Boston Tea Party. She was 15 years old at the time of the Battle of Concord and Lexington, and seven months later, at age 16, she married 20-year-old Allen Lincoln, a seaman, who was soon to go off to battle.(1)

    Allen served at least three times with the Continental forces. He did at least one stint with the local militia, defending our coast. He served in the Continental Army for three months in 1777, serving in the New York and New Jersey area.(2) And he served as a sailor, perhaps aboard a privateer; indeed, he may have been at sea much of the time during the early years of the Revolution. Many men in Cohasset went away for military service during the war, leaving Cohasset women to take on their work. Persis’s mother Bethia had the nickname “Resolution” Tower, because she was “said to have carted water in barrels from Lily Pond to water the corn [on the farm on King Street.] during a drought while the men were away in the Revolutionary War.” For her part, Persis bravely sailed a small boat through the British blockade across Massachusetts Bay to get much-needed supplies. Because of this, we remember her as a heroine of the American Revolution.(3)

    In March, 1778, while Persis was pregnant their first child, Allen was one of several seamen imprisoned by the British in Rhode Island. Allen never came home again, and there appears no record of when or where he died. When Sally, Persis and Allen’s daughter, was christened in our meetinghouse on October 18, 1778, Persis wouldn’t have known where Allen was, or whether he was alive or dead. It wasn’t until 1782 that Persis could finally settle her husband’s estate.(4)

    Allen Lincoln’s story is a reminder what prisoners of war faced during the Revolution. The total death toll among prisoners of war held by the British may have been as high as 19,000 men.(5) Persis probably never knew the exact fate of her husband, and I find it difficult to imagine the uncertainty she had to live with — raising an infant child while not knowing where her husband was.

    In 1786, Persis married James Hall, who had been a captain in the Continental Army, even serving as an aide to General Washington. Persis and James lived in the house that his father had built on Cohasset Common using timbers of the old meetinghouse, which was taken down when our present meetinghouse was erected in 1747. Three of their children died in infancy, but they received a bigger shock when their oldest child, Henry, died at age sixteen; he had gone to sea and died of yellow fever in the West Indies. Persis and James hadn’t bothered christening four of Henry’s younger siblings, but within weeks of hearing of his death, they had those four siblings christened all on the same day.(6) After all Persis had been through — Allen’s disappearance, the loss of children in infancy, Henry’s death far from home — perhaps the religious ritual of christening served as a reminder that there was hope for the future.

    Briton Nichols

    The next Revolutionary War story I’d like to tell you is the story of Briton Nichols. I told his story in a previous sermon, but I got some facts wrong, and found out some new facts, so I thought I’d tell it again.(7)

    Briton Nichols first appears in the historical record when he was 17 years old, and listed as a slave in the 1757 will of Nathaniel Nichols, Sr. The next time he appears in the historical record is on March 16, 1776, when he was thirty-seven. This was the day before the British evacuated Boston; Cohasset and other coastal towns were securing their coastal defenses against the possibility of a British naval attack. Briton served for a few days with the Hingham town militia, one of many men from Cohasset, Hingham, and Hull who helped defend the coast.

    A year later, in 1777, Briton enlisted in the Continental Army. We can only speculate why he decided to enlist at age 37. Although enslaved men would join the military to earn their freedom, Nichols was probably free by this time. The economy was in a shambles due to the war, he probably had a wife, and he might have enlisted because he needed money. He also may have believed in the Patriot ideals of freedom and liberty. Whatever his reasons, he and a contingent of soldiers from Cohasset marched together to join the fighting in Saratoga, New York.

    Ambrose Bates, one of Briton’s messmates, kept a diary during their military service. The Cohasset men reached Saratoga in early September and joined the fight against General Burgoyne. The Bates diary shows that much of their military service was filled with boredom. Several days were filled with monotonous marching back and forth from one place to another. Many days, Bates simply records, “Nothing new today.” Days of boredom were interspersed with days with more than enough excitement. On October 7 Bates recorded: “today we had a fight we were alarmed about noon and the fight begun, the sun two hours high at night and we drove them and took field pieces and took sum prisoners.” The British finally surrendered on October 16. All the Cohasset men then marched down to Tarrytown, where they saw little action. Their three month term of service ended on November 30. They marched home at a quick pace, averaging 27 miles a day, arriving in Cohasset on December 7.

    Next, in 1779 Briton Nichols enlisted for a month’s service in Rhode Island, and a month’s service in the Hudson River Valley. Then in 1780, now age forty, he enlisted for six months as part of a levy raised by the town of Cohasset. When the Cohasset men arrived in Springfield, New Jersey, the last major battle in New Jersey had already been fought, but they didn’t know that, and British troops were still active in the area. In October, he was stationed at a military base in New Jersey, part of a large force encamped on two heights above the Totowa River. Even though some of the soldiers’ clothes were in rags, and they sometimes didn’t get enough to eat, they were nevertheless an able fighting force. The British attempted only one attack on Camp Totowa, following a band of Americans who had been out on a foray; they were quickly driven back. We can imagine that perhaps Briton Nichols was sent out on one of the forays against the British, but there’s no way of knowing what service he actually saw.

    That was his last stint in the army. In traveling to and from military service, he walked the astounding distance of some 1500 miles, sometimes managing a punishing pace of 27 miles a day. After the war, Briton moved from Cohasset to Hingham, where he lived with his wife Phebe. Although Briton and Phebe never made much money, at least they kept their freedom and independence.

    I’m not sure that we today can fully understand what Briton Nichols lived through. He began life enslaved, then became free before he became a soldier. He served as a Revolutionary War soldier where he probably saw serious fighting. After the war, he lived to see slavery abolished in Massachusetts. While he never owned real estate, as other free Blacks in Cohasset and Hingham did, he at least managed to maintain his financial freedom.(8) I imagine he must have had a strong spiritual core to get through all that. Perhaps, as was true of many African Americans, he drew on both Christianity, traditional African spirituality, and the humanism that was later expressed in the blue. Whatever the source of his spiritual strength, I admire his resilience and courage.

    Noah Nichols

    The third and final person I’d like to tell you about is Noah Nichols Jr. Before I do, let me digress briefly to tell you how the lives of all three of the people whose stories I’m telling today are intertwined. Noah Jr.’s paternal grandfather, Nathaniel Nichols, was the enslaver of Briton Nichols, and Briton may have been living with one of Noah’s cousins as late as 1776.(9) Noah Nichols Jr. and Persis Tower Lincoln Hall were second cousins, sharing their great-grandfather Israel Winslow Nichols. And Persis’ first husband, Allen, was third cousin once removed to Noah’s wife Abigail. Now let’s get back to Noah.

    Noah Nichols was born on January 8, 1754, the third of thirteen children. His father, Noah Sr., had served in the French and Indian War.(10) And Noah Sr. was one of the wealthier landowners in Cohasset; in 1771, just before he died, he ranked 31 out of 123 property owners in Cohasset.(11)

    Noah Sr. died in 1771, when Noah Jr. was seventeen; leaving his wife Abigail pregnant and responsible for nine other children. By March of 1775, Noah was having sex with his girlfriend Abigail Lincoln. Their first child was born on December 15 of that year, though they remained unmarried. This may seem surprising to us today, but there was a rise in premarital sex in Massachusetts in the second half of the eighteenth century, and some 30 to 40% of all first births were conceived before marriage.(12)

    Noah and Abigail finally got married on February 28, 1776. By July, Noah was working as a wheelwright for the Continental Army at Ticonderoga.(13) As with Briton Nichols, we can’t know whether he was motivated by money or by ideals. He must have displayed leadership ability, though, for on November 9, 1776, he was commissioned as a captain in Col. Ebenezer Stevens’s artillery battalion.(14) The army had decided to create companies of skilled workmen whose trades they needed. These were called “artificer companies,” and a master artisan was placed in charge of the company, often with the rank of officer.(15)

    Now that he was in charge of an artificer company, Noah had to find skilled workers to fill the company. By January, 1777, he was back in Cohasset, and on February 2, four Cohasset men enlisted in Noah’s artificer company: his brother Bela, Jonathan Bates, Melzar Joy, and James Stoddard (James had been one of the Cohasset men who participated in the Boston Tea Party).(16)

    While in Cohasset, Noah also attended to some spiritual business. His daughter Susannah was now two years old, and hadn’t been christened yet. On February 15, Noah and Abigail presented their child to be christened here in this meetinghouse by Rev. John Brown, our Patriot minister. Noah and Abigail went further than that — they also “owned the covenant,” that is, became formal members of the church. The process of owning the covenant went like this: after a private meeting with the minister, a formal meeting of the church was convened during which the applicants for membership publicly confessed their sins. Noah and Abigail did this on February 15.(17) Owning the covenant was a serious and major commitment; many people waited until they were a good bit older to own the covenant, if they bothered doing it at all. We can thus sense a change in Noah from the young man who, before the war, didn’t bother marrying his girlfriend until after their first child was born. Perhaps some of the things Noah had seen during his military service had given him a sense of his mortality, a desire to deepen his spirituality.

    Noah was back with the army in March, 1777, marching with his company for Ticonderoga. They were stationed there when General Burgoyne’s forces attacked. In July, they retreated to Albany with the rest of the artillery brigade.(18) During the retreat, a private serving under Noah was taken prisoner by the British.(19) By mid-July, Noah was back in Cohasset for leave.(20) Then in September and October, his company was in the battles that eventually led to the defeat of the British, and was present at the surrender of General Burgoyne.(21)

    After leaving Albany, Noah was based in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the remainder of his military service. It was probably during this time that he had a memorable encounter with General Washington. While on a forced march, General Washington ordered him to repair the wheel of a gun carriage. Captain Nichols requested permission to stop the carriage while he was doing the repairs, but the general abruptly refused. Noah had to do the repairs while the gun carriage was underway. Telling this story in later years, Noah added, “It was the hardest thing I ever did, but I did it.”(22)

    By 1779, when Noah had put in three years of military service, the pay of the artificers had depreciated badly, and because the artificer companies didn’t belong to a state unit, their officers didn’t receive the allowance given to regular officers.(23) And although Noah had received an officer’s commission, the other officers serving under him — including his brother Bela — never received their commissions, though they had been promised.(24) In early 1780, the artificer corps were reorganized under cost-saving measures.(25)

    I suspect this was the last straw for Noah. On March 26, 1780, Noah’s second child, Elizabeth, was christened, and presumably he was present for the ceremony.(26) Noah resigned his officer’s commission on April 3.(27) By 1781, all officers of the artificer corps were dismissed as a cost-saving measure.

    After returning to Cohasset, Noah resumed working as a cartwright and a housewright; when there wasn’t enough work in his chosen trade, he would take on other kinds of work like plowing.(28) In 1787, he finally received compensation from Massachusetts for the depreciation of wages he suffered from 1777 to 1780.(29) Noah and Abigail had five children in 1787, so no doubt the extra money was welcome.

    Noah was one of two highest ranking Revolutionary War veterans in Cohasset; the other being Captain James Hall. Late in life, Noah took pride in his military service, and he “was accustomed in his old age to shoulder his fire-lock, ‘And show how the fields were won.’”(30) Noah died in 1833, aged 79, still an active member of this parish.(31)

    Now that I’ve told you about these three people — Persis, Briton, and Noah — here’s what I take away from their stories. First of all, all three of them lived through very challenging times. Living in Cohasset during the Revolution meant the threat of British invasion. The war also caused economic hard times, with depreciation of currency and shortages of food and goods. With all the men away fighting, that meant more work for those who stayed home. Soldiers and sailors might wind up as prisoners of war or missing in action, leaving their families in dreadful uncertainty. Even the soldiers and sailors who returned might have seen horrors that would affect them for the rest of their lives. — And all this was on top of the normal difficulties of those times: the many children who died in infancy; the challenge of wresting a living from the rocky soil of New England, or from the often dangerous Atlantic Ocean.

    Looking back, we think of the Revolutionary generation as somehow more heroic than we are. But they weren’t. They were ordinary people just like us. Somehow, they managed to summon up the courage to get through the hard times. Some of them, like Noah Nichols, found extra strength through participating in this religious community. For others, like Briton Nichols, we’ll never know know for sure where they found the strength to get through those hard times.

    We face hard times today — if we’re honest, times today aren’t nearly as hard as they were then — but still, we face hard times. Looking back at that Revolutionary generation causes me to wonder about where I’m going to get the strength to get me through the hard times of today. The Revolutionary generation found strength in their spiritual practices, and they found strength in the connections of family and community. Perhaps those are the places we should be looking for our own strength.

    Notes

    (1) Records of First Parish in Cohasset; Mass. Vital Records.
    (2) Details of Allen’s military service may be found in Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (Boston: Wright & Potter, State Printers, 1902), p. 798; “United States, Rosters of Revolutionary War Soldiers and Sailors, 1775-1966,” www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q5W9-9RDY , Entry for Allen Lincoln. Record of his imprisonment may be found in Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (Boston: Wright & Potter, State Printers, 1902), p. 79; “United States, Rosters of Revolutionary War Soldiers and Sailors, 1775-1966,” www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QG2M-NFW5 , Entry for Allyn Lyncoln [note the two different spellings of his name]: “Lyncoln, Allyn. List of prisoners delivered to Col. Gabriel Johonnot by Mr. Charles Waller, Commissary of Prisoners at Rhode Island, March 17, 1778; reported a Seaman.”
    (3) Victor Bigelow, Narrative History of Cohasset (1898), p. 306; p. 290.
    (4) Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family (Worcester, Mass.: Commonwealth Press, 1923), pp. 185-186.: “August 9, 1782, Persis Lincoln of Cohasset, widow, was admitted administratrix on the estate of Allin Lincoln, late of Cohasset, deceased intestate. The inventory of his estate, dated Aug. 14, 1782, shows that he left: real estate, house and half an acre of land, £80; personal estate £26:10. (Suffolk County Probate Records, vol. lxxxi, pp. 379, 630.)”
    (5) See e.g. Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners during the Revolutionary War (Basic Books, 2008), p. 317 n. 12.
    (6) First Parish records.
    (7) The story of Briton Nichols is a condensed version of a talk I gave for the Cohasset Historical Society on 28 Feb. 2026, revised 30 March based on comments by Paula Bagger and George Quintal, and further research. That talk has been deposited in the First Parish archives, and full footnotes may be found there.
    (8) His wife Phebe was not so fortunate. After Briton’s death, she sank into poverty, and died in the Hingham poorhouse.
    (9) Paula Bagger’s research (personal communication) indicates the following: In 1773, Nathaniel Sr.’s estate is finally settled on Nathaniel Jr.’s children; the land is divided up, but there is no mention of Britain Nichols. In Cohasset’s 1776 census, the household of Nathaniel Nichols 3rd (1749-1833) had one Black resident; this may or may not have been Briton, and it is not clear whether that person was enslaved or free.
    (10) Victor Bigelow, p. 279; History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, vol. III [Cambridge: University Press, John Wilson and son, 1893], p.87-88.
    (11) Victor Bigelow, pp. 277-276.
    (12) Robert Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill, 1976), p. 217, concluded that 41% of all first births in Concord, Mass., between 1760 and 1774 were prenuptial conceptions. Karen A. Weyler, “The Fruit of Unlawful Embraces,” Sex and Sexuality in Early America, ed. Merril D. Smith (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 292, says that the “changing relationship between parents and children may have also contributed to the striking rise in the incidence of premarital sex during the last decades of the eighteenth century…. from 1761 to 1800, 33 percent of all first births to married women occurred before the ninth month of marriage.”
    (13) Letter dated July 11, 1776, reprinted in: Peter Force, American Archives, Fifth Series: A Documentary History of the United States of America [July 4, 1776 to Sept. 3, 1783], volume I (Washington, D.C.: M. St. Clair and Peter Force, 1848), p. 653.
    (14) Robert K. Wright, The Continental Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army), p. 329; also see: W. T. R. Saffell, Records of the Revolutionary War 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Charles C. Saffell, 1894), p. 160.
    (15) Erna Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1981), p. 152.
    (16) Saffell, Records of the Revolutionary War, p. 160.
    (17) In the First Parish records, these events appear as follows: In records of church meetings, “1777. Feby 15. Noah Nichols, and wife Abigail”; this would have been the church meeting where they confessed their sins. In records of those who owned the covenant, “1777. Feby 15. Noah Nickols and his Abigail his wife.” Finally, Susannah’s baptism is listed on that date. Note that in the terminology of the day, “church” meant the religious organization; this was different from the business side of the congregation, which was managed by the proprietors.
    (18) Some of these details from the account of the military service of Edward Burril of Lynn, Mass., who served under Capt. Noah Nichols. See: Howard Kendall Sanderson, Lynn in the Revolution, Part II (Boston: W. B. Clarke Company, 1909), pp. 236-237.
    (19) Saffell, Records of the Revolutionary War, p. 160.
    (20) Deduced from the birth date of his daughter Elizabeth.
    (21) Sanderson, p. 237.
    (22) From the address given by Hon. Thomas Russell at the Centennial Anniversary of the town of Cohasset, May 7, 1870, reprinted in: Duane Hamilton Hurd, ed., History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis & Cop., 1884), Chapter XIX: Cohasset, pp. 219-220.
    (23) Erna Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1981), p. 155.
    (24) Journals of the Continental Congress 1774-1789, vol. XV. 1779 (September 2-December 31) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), p. 1388-1389.
    (25) Erna Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1981), pp. 156-157.
    (26) First Parish records.
    (27) Francis B. “Alphabetical List of Officers of the Continental Army,” Historical Register of the Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, April 1775 to December 1783 (Washington, DC, Rare Book Shop Publishing Co., Inc., 1914), p. 414.
    (28) The account book of Ambrose Nichols, covering dates from c. 1809 to c. 1830 provides these details; presumably the two brothers, pursuing the same trade, had similar experiences. See the finding aid: University of Massachusetts Amherst, Ambrose Nichols Account Book, 1809-1830, 1 volume (0.25 linear ft.) Call no.: MS 210, findingaids.library.umass.edu/ead/mums210.pdf
    (29) “Noah Nichols appears as a Captain on an account rendered against the United States by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for amounts paid officers and men of Capt. Jeduthan Baldwin’s regt. on account of depreciation of their wages for the first three years’ service in the Continental Army from 1777 to 1780. Account exhibited by Committee on Claims in behalf of Mass. against U.S., Sept 21, 1787.” — Entry for Noah Nichols, 21 September 1787, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGKC-WVCV
    (30) Thomas Russell, in Duane Hamilton Hurd (1884), p. 220.
    (31) First Parish records. Rev. Jacob Flint usually only recorded the name of the person who died, but in this case he noted: “June 23. Noah Nichols in his 79th year.”

  • Easter Joy

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Sermon

    Traditionally, Easter tells the story of the literal resurrection of Jesus, in which he rises from the dead after being executed. The traditional Easter story is ultimately a story of how an impossible situation can be transformed into a hopeful and joyful situation. And I don’t know about you, but given the news these days, I could use some hope and joy.

    Now, we Unitarian Universalists happen to have a wide variety of theological viewpoints, and many of us interpret the Easter story in non-traditional ways. So this year, rather than offering just one interpretation of Easter, I’d like to give you four different takes on the basic message of Easter. We’re going to hear four poems by Unitarian Universalist poets, expressing beliefs ranging from liberal Christian, to very liberal post-Christian, to Neo-Pagan, to humanist. Most of these poems link Easter with the hope and joy and transformation of the spring season. Admittedly, if we were in the southern hemisphere where Easter comes in autumn, equating Easter with spring doesn’t work so well. But here we are in the northern hemisphere, so we can make a link between the Easter season, and the hope and joy and transformation of the spring season.

    With that introduction, let’s listen as our worship associate, Mary T., reads the first poem:

    “Dandelions” by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

    Welcome children of the Spring,
    In your garbs of green and gold,
    Lifting up your sun-crowned heads
    On the verdant plain and wold.

    As a bright and joyous troop
    From the breast of earth ye came
    Fair and lovely are your cheeks,
    With sun-kisses all aflame.

    In the dusty streets and lanes,
    Where the lowly children play,
    There as gentle friends ye smile,
    Making brighter life’s highway

    Dewdrops and the morning sun,
    Weave your garments fair and bright,
    And we welcome you to-day
    As the children of the light.

    Children of the earth and sun.
    We are slow to understand
    All the richness of the gifts
    Flowing from our Father’s hand.

    Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who lived from 1825 to 1911, represents typical Unitarian Christianity of the late nineteenth century. Although this poem doesn’t specifically mention Easter, it still feels like a Unitarian interpretation of Easter to me. Late-nineteenth century Unitarians were mostly interested in what Jesus did during his lifetime, and they thought a lot about how to live out his teachings in the present day. As a result, they didn’t spend much too time worrying about whether the Easter story of resurrection was literally true or whether it was a metaphor. Instead, they concerned themselves with trying to follow Jesus’s example — helping the poor, loving their neighbors, and so on.

    I see this pragmatic Unitarian attitude in Frances Harper’s poem about dandelions. Instead of writing a poem about the showy flowers that well-to-do people from in their gardens, she turns her attention to the lowly dandelion. Dandelions grow everywhere, even in “the dusty streets and lanes, / Where lowly children play.” So it is that God brings the joy of springtime — the joy that we associate with Easter — to everyone on earth, whether rich or poor. As an African American, Frances Harper was fully aware that Black people in late nineteenth century America often didn’t have equal access to many things; yet God brings beauty and joy to all human beings equally, regardless of race. Even though this poem doesn’t specifically mention Easter, it tells us something important about Easter — that God wants everyone to have equal access to the joy of Easter. Frances Harper would tell us that if we find some people don’t have equal access to Easter joy, well then, that’s a problem caused by humans, not by God — which means it’s a problem that we humans can solve.

    Now let’s hear another poem, “i thank You God for most this amazing day” by E. E. Cummings (poem is not included here due to copyright restrictions, but a legal audio version of the poem may be heard on the Poetry Foundation website)….

    E. E. Cummings, who wrote this poem, was the son of a Unitarian minister. As an adult he had no formal religious affiliation, yet even so this poem sounds very Unitarian to me. It’s what you might call a post-Christian poem — the poem uses some standard Christian images, yet those images are interpreted in a very free manner. Cummings writes “i who have died am alive again today,” which sounds like the standard story of Easter (except that story is not usually told in the first person). Then Cummings takes this in a decidedly non-standard direction by saying: “this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth / day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay / great happening illimitably earth.” This is not orthodox Christian theology.

    The final stanza of the poem, while clearly unorthodox, does carry an echo of some of Jesus’s words. In the synoptic gospels (that is, the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the Christian scriptures), Jesus often tells his followers to pay attention. For example, Jesus says: “After all, there is nothing hidden except to be brought to light, nor anything secreted away that won’t be exposed. If anyone here has two good ears, use them!” (Mark 4:22-23, Jesus Seminar translation). We hear lots of talk about the importance of mindfulness these days, but this is not a modern phenomenon. For thousands of years, prophets and sages have been telling us to wake up and pay attention. E. E. Cummings is echoing not only Jesus, but other prophets and sages, when he tells us, “now the ears of my ears awake and / now the eyes of my eyes are opened”. And what is Cummings urging us to pay attention to? — he is telling us to pay attention to wonder, and beauty — in short, he is telling us to wake up to joy. Or as Jesus put it, “Anyone here with two ears had better listen!” (Matt. 13:9, Jesus Seminar translation)

    Now let’s hear another poem, this one by a Neo-Pagan Unitarian Universalist — “Seed for Spring Equinox / March 21” by Annie Finch. The poet says: “For the full effect, speak the poem aloud 3 times.”

    Annie Finch is a Neo-Pagan; the Neo-Pagan religions reach back in Western culture to the ancient earth-centered religions that existed before Christianity took over. Like many Neo-pagans, Annie Finch recognizes eight main holy days in the year: the two equinoxes, the two solstices, and the four days that lie halfway between the equinoxes and solstices. Like many Neo-pagans, Annie Finch traces the roots of the Christian holiday of Easter back to an older pagan holiday called Ostara, which was connected with the spring equinox. The poem we just heard is an Ostara poem, and it’s also a spring equinox poem.

    Finch also believes in the power of the spoken word. Poetry is not just something your high school English teacher made you read. Poetry contains a kind of magical power, the power of incantatory words spoken or chanted aloud. This may seem an alien concept to many of us today; but all human cultures have recognized the power of the spoken word. Our politicians still rely on the spoken word to sway the electorate. Religions rely on the spoken word through chanting scriptures, repeating mantras, saying prayers aloud, or even hearing sermons. People who are deaf might cast some doubt on whether the power of the spoken word is universal. In response, some religious traditions would reply: it’s the vibrational energy that’s important, or the communal aspect of speaking something aloud to a group of people, not the actual perceived sound.

    Whatever you might believe, or disbelieve, about the mystical powers of poetry, this poem by Annie Finch is — to my way of thinking — a poem about hope, and ultimately a poem about joy. The poem is spoken from the point of view of a seed that has been planted and is beginning to sprout — therein lies the hope, for as any gardener can tell you, the act of planting a seed is an expression of hope for the future. And then there’s the moment when the seed’s “head and shoulders past the open crust / dried by spring wind” and the new plant emerges into the spring sunshine — this is a moment of joy. By speaking the poem aloud, we enter into that mindset of transformation, and perhaps that may help us to transform ourselves — a hopeful thought.

    Now let’s hear one final poem, from the 1923 book “Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams:

    By the road to the contagious hospital
    under the surge of the blue
    mottled clouds driven from the
    northeast — a cold wind. Beyond, the
    waste of broad, muddy fields
    brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

    patches of standing water
    the scattering of tall trees

    All along the road the reddish
    purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
    stuff of bushes and small trees
    with dead, brown leaves under them
    leafless vines —

    Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
    dazed spring approaches —

    They enter the new world naked,
    cold, uncertain of all
    save that they enter. All about them
    the cold, familiar wind —

    Now the grass, tomorrow
    the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
    One by one objects are defined —
    It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

    But now the stark dignity of
    entrance — Still, the profound change
    has come upon them: rooted, they
    grip down and begin to awaken

    This poem by William Carlos Williams contains no mention of Easter or Ostara, no mention of Jesus or God. Nevertheless, it seems to me it poem tells much the same story as the other poems we have heard. There is a sense of hope for the future, the hope that comes every spring as the world emerges from winter cold and darkness. There is a sense of joy, the joy of new life, of new beginnings — we might even say, the joy that comes with the sense of resurrection of the natural world from the dead time of winter. Above all, there is a sense of the importance of paying attention. Pay attention to “the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf”, for in that tiny, easily-overlooked detail we can find a revelation of what is to come.

    Williams was a physician, and as is true of many physicians he had a scientific outlook. His poetry reflects that scientific outlook in the careful attention to small details, and the ability to connect those small details to a larger whole. Our culture likes to pretend that science and religion are opposed to one another, but a poem like this shows that science and religion can find unity in a sense of wonder — unity in the joy that can come from paying close and careful attention to the world around us.

    As a Unitarian Universalist, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about deep theological questions like the existence of God, the existence of the historical Jesus, the relative truth values of the world’s religions, and so on. These will always be attractive questions, questions which have been worthy of the attention of some of the greatest minds through human history. As I get older, I find myself less interested in questions that (quite apparently) won’t be answered in my lifetime. So I have no longer have much interest in trying to settle, once and for all, all the debates and questions about the story of Easter. Instead, I find myself increasingly adopting the attitude that I sense in the William Carlos Williams poem. I spent yesterday taking a class on the graminoids, a group of plants that include grasses, rushes, and sedges. Talk about paying close attention! — we spent much of the class looking at the seeds of plants through a dissecting microscope. And talk about hope for the future! — we examined the fine structures that have evolved to allow the seeds a maximum chance of creating new life. This seemed a worthy and appropriate way for a Unitarian Universalist like me to spend Easter weekend. So you can see, science and religion are not so far apart as some would have us believe.

    So there you have it — four very different poems about hope and joy and transformation. Believe whatever you wish about God and Jesus and Easter; we Unitarian Universalists have no required beliefs. Believe what you want, but pay close attention to the world. And if you’re willing to pay close attention to the world, no matter who you are — no matter how much money you have, or what race or ethnicity you are, or whom you love, or what your gender might be — your attention will be rewarded with amazement and transformation and hope and joy; for the wonder and beauty of the world remains universally open to all.