Monday, July 24, 2017

A Minute Meditation

No. 227

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world--the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.  The galling harness of civilization drops off, and the wounds heal ere we are aware.  

-- John  Muir --
In His Own Words 

There's nothing I can add to this.   

13 comments:

  1. I dare to add by asking an implied question within a statement.
    I can understand fresh and unblighted but do not understand unredeemed wilderness; unredeemed puzzles me.

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    1. R.T.--perhaps he means to separate it from any organized religion?

      It also could be a sarcastic remark. In other comments he has said that most people only consider places with which one can make a profit. If a place can't be redeemed by making a profit off of it, then it has no value whatsoever.

      The Native Americans generally were forced onto reservations that seemingly had no value at all. However, if gold or silver or oil were discovered . . . You know what happens then.

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    2. Fred, perhaps. I saw the word, and my mind jumped to redeemed within a Christian context. He could not have intended that meaning?

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    3. R.T.--if a place is "unredeemed" in the Christian sense, I don't know what that means.

      Muir does refer to God in a number of his comments, but I don't think he's referring specifically to the Christian God. If there is a Scripture which teaches him about God, it is nature. But, then again, I've read very little by him, so I really don't know much about him.

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  2. no... see my comment at Tim's place...

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    1. Mudpuddle--are you referring to your message to his latest post?

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    2. The verese as well as all your fascinating commentary, Fred, Mudpuddle and Tim, make me want to read more John Muir.

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    3. Brian--many of the quotations come from _John Muir: In His Own Words_. It would be a good way to get acquainted with his works.

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  3. I read it as a Rousseauian view of the world - contrasting nature and civilization.

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    1. James--Yes, that dichotomy is clearly there, and civilization comes off the worse in the comparison.

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  4. it's interesting to contrast this quote with the Dunbar poem, "Masks"... where D speaks of the armor we carry to deal with the world and M celebrates getting rid of a similar "galling harness" in order to engage with what he regards as the Real world: forests and mountains and wilderness societies(animals)... "redeeming" i think can only be regarded as a bit of sarcasm reflecting M's literal hatred of Human oppression as regards his natural world(logging, mining, flooding, the encroachment of civilization...)....

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    1. Mudpuddle--I hadn't seen that before, but both do celebrate either getting away from (Muir) or hiding away (Dunbar) from human and human institutions.

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