JOHN MUIR AGAIN

Posted: 01.04.20 in Articles category

April is the month of John Muir's anniversary - born 180 years ago on 21 April 1818. Although he is most revered in America, John Muir is increasingly remembered in the land of his birth, especially in Dunbar where there is a small but impressive museum dedicated to his memory. My particular interest is in his devotional meditations as someone who saw God's handiwork all around us in nature. John Muir argued passionately that every natural thing has intrinsic value and significance as God-created. Here are a series of quotations from his various autobiographical writings, taken from the booklet "STILL WALKING THE WORLD" published in 2007 by the 'Friends of John Muir's Birthplace'.

".... in looking through God's great stone books made up of records reaching back millions and millions of years, it is a great comfort to learn the vast multitudes of creatures, great and small and infinite in number, lived and had a good time in God's love before man was created."

"Like everybody else I was always fond of flowers, attracted by their external beauty and purity. Now my eyes were opened to their inner beauty, all alike revealing glorious traces of the thoughts of God, and leading on and on into the infinite cosmos."

"A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fibre thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer the Lord sees himself."