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John Muir nature's prophet
Sunday 10th March 2024
Mike Mullins
John Muir (1838- 1914) is one of the great modern prophets of ecological sustainability. Born in the east Lothian coastal town of Dunbar, into a Calvinist family he moved with his family to Wisconsin USA in 1849.
Every rock every life form was pulsing with the divine for Muir and the stars were pulsed onwards by the heart of God. Muir was influenced in his reverence for the sacredness of nature by his grandfather, David Gilrye, who took him on trips along the East Lothian coast.
The earth Muir said is a divine incarnation. Everything is spirit incarnated in flesh. All matter is "simply portions of God". Brought up by his angry "all bible" Calvinist father who forced him to learn all of the New Testament by heart. Muir's innate sensitivity taught him that there was another sacred text the universe. The earth is a "divine manuscript". Like Erigena he believed there were two books through which the divine spoke the little and the big book of the cosmos and the divine is still writing passages.
Whilst studying at the university of Wisconsin he was introduced to Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" (1859) by a geologist Ezra Carr. Muir began to understand that the universe was still in the process of becoming. Jeanne Carr, Ezras wife became Muir's anamcara, friend, or lover of his soul, encouraging him to explore and develop his passionate love of nature.
In 1867 an industrial accident in a sawmill meant he almost lost his sight. The trauma of the experience and then regaining his sight again and being able to see nature anew taught him to see with the "eye of the heart". Seeing the deep glory in all things, like Mose's burning bush. A "Spiritual fire burning in every tree, in every bush, in every stone, ... Every bush is a burning bush".
Why should humanity value itself as more than "a small part of the one great unit of creation?" he asked. He increasingly saw the other than human as "our earth born companions". Man comes from heaven but no more than bees or daisies all living things come from "one fountain soul".
In 1868 Muir ventured into the Yosemite Valley California for the first time. It was a spiritual homecoming for him "the whole sky and the rocks and flowers are drenched with God". He was touching "naked God" in the beauty and majesty of Yosemite. He began to speak of the wildness of the divine, the untamableness of God.
During a storm he once tied himself to the top of a 100-foot Douglas fir so he could sway with the tree in the wind and experience the crashing of trees around him as they fell. He felt himself to be part of wild nature, "kin to everything", "I am in the woods, woods, woods and they are in me-ee-ee. The king tree (Sequoia) and I have sworn eternal love".
For Muir "in Gods wildness lies the hope of the world". We need to let go of the idea that we are masters of the earth or that the earth needs our sophisticated civilisation and technology. It doesn't, we need the earth, it doesn't need us.
Muir teaches us that we need to rewild ourselves, to reconnect to the ways and rhythms of the earth, the seasons, harvesting food sustainably from the land and sea, greening our cities. Hope lies primarily in our untamed imagination and spirituality, not in technology, rational science or so-called enlightenment progress. Which if pursued relentlessly will end in the destruction of nature and humanity. So, we need to rewild our souls and reconnect to the "one fountain soul" the wild, surging source of divine life within us.
Muir's study of geology and botany made him realise that everything is in flux and interconnected, "everything is flowing-going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water". Creation isn't a past event but rather ongoing, "nature's not in a hurry".
Muir saw the inter connectedness, the interbeing of all things, "when we try to pick anything out by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe", "the sun shines not simply on us but in us. The river flows not just past us but through us and every bird song wind song and storm song is our song", "we are a bundle of the world".
Muir attacked the destruction of nature in 19th century USA driven by greed and profit. Raising awareness of environmental destruction in over one hundred articles written in the 1870s most famous of which was "Gods first Temples" written for the "Sacramento Daily Union" in 1876, which talked of forests and mountains as being temples of the divine long before homo sapiens arrived on earth.
He invites us all back into a deep love affair with our mother earth. Muir wrote and lobbied for the protection of wilderness in the USA. In 1903 he took President Roosevelt on a three-day camping tour of Yosemite. The president, moved by the beauty of Yosemite, went on to establish 5 national parks, 15 nature reserves and 55 national bird sanctuaries. Muir played a critical role in this work.
John Muir died on Christmas eve 1914 from pneumonia aged 76. He is our prophet of hope in these times of ecological crisis "earth has no sorrows that earth cannot heal", the one fountain soul still lies within the earth and within us waiting to be awakened and set free.