LIFE IS A TRIP… KEEP GOING
Launched a song on Bandcamp as well.
Reverend Richard Emmanuel made his unexpected exit stage left on Saturday, December 28, 2024, at Boston Medical Center. He was 78—not young, not old, but precisely the age the universe decided he needed to be.
Richard wasn’t just a man; he was a movement. A founder, a seeker, a provocateur of profound questions, and a creator of even more profound art. His life’s work, The Church, was established in 1968 as what he called a "spiritual metaphysical bus stop." For over fifty years, it served as a meditation center, meeting house, and refuge for spiritual seekers and lost souls from Gloucester to the farthest reaches of human longing.
But before The Church, there was the walkabout—the journey of a man born in Lynn, Massachusetts, a place as gritty as its famous rhyme: “Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin… you never come out the way you went in.” Lynn was where Richard first stepped into the human narrative, growing up with a machinist father, an artist-activist mother, and an education steeped in classical rigors.
His formal studies took him to the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where his academic wanderlust spanned comparative religions, philosophy, and architecture. It was there, amid the heady mix of Giordano Bruno’s cosmic pluralism and the whispered revelations of the Marsh Chapel Experiment, that Richard began to see the world—and himself—through kaleidoscopic eyes. Eastern mysticism, psychedelia, and a hunger for something bigger than dogma came together, and The Church was born.
Richard never called it a church in the traditional sense. It was an experiment, a living, breathing testament to the idea that spirituality is not a set of rules but a relationship—a dance—between the soul and the infinite. There were no memberships, no fees, no sermons about hellfire or brimstone. It was simply a place to meditate, connect, and question.
Anthony Petro, a religion professor at Boston University, described it as “an artifact of the ‘60s idiosyncratic religious movement, where the focus was purely on the spiritual.” Richard’s provocative art installations, which filled The Church, were an invitation to interact with the divine energy within. “To question one’s life journey and path is to become conscious of what you sow is what you’re going to reap,” Petro said, echoing the essence of Richard’s philosophy.
That philosophy spilled into every corner of his life. Richard’s creative streak manifested in paintings and installations that gave form to his spiritual quest. He also took his visionary mind into the corporate world, consulting for companies like General Electric, Sony, and Volkswagen on how to wield iconography and symbols like modern-day shamans.
Richard’s walkabout extended to activism as well. He was a fierce protector of Cape Ann’s natural beauty, a vocal advocate for environmental preservation in a world too often indifferent to its own destruction.
The seasons of his life mirrored the planetary ones. Spring was his childhood in Lynn, an era of gestation and discovery. Summer was his young adulthood in Washington, D.C., and later Los Angeles, where he encountered luminaries like Alan Watts and absorbed the cosmic whispers of psychedelia. Watts, in particular, became a kindred spirit, their friendship flowering in San Francisco’s vibrant spiritual scene.
Middle age, his autumn, was a kaleidoscope of shared spiritual experiences through The Church. For fifty years, it served as a platform for him to explore humanity’s greatest creation—the God enigma—and the greatest tragedy: losing touch with the divine spark within.
Finally, winter, the elderhood, brought Richard to the center stage of life, where he reflected on the cyclical nature of existence. He often quoted Bette Davis, who declared, “Growing old ain’t for sissies,” and yet he faced it with the same boldness that defined him. For Richard, elderhood wasn’t an end but a new beginning, a chance to share the ultimate truth: “It is you. It’s the divine within.”
To those who knew him, Richard was a guide, a provocateur, and a kindred soul. He reminded anyone who would listen—and many who wouldn’t—of three eternal truths:
- Nobody gets out of here alive.
- Shrouds don’t have pockets, so your collection stays here.
- Life has no meaning—unless you create it.
As the lights dim on Richard Emmanuel’s walkabout, his refrain lingers like a melody you can’t shake:
“Life is a trip… Keep going.”
For life is not, nor has it ever been, what you were told it is. It’s better. Or worse. Or both. Either way, you’ll only find out if you keep walking.