Skip to main content

Higher Trails to a Beauty Beyond God

By Chris Highland ~

While studying Philosophy at Seattle Pacific ("free" Methodist) University, a wise old professor suggested I thumb through some Nietzsche. My evangelical mind was already stumbling numb from reading Socrates in Greek, and staggering in and out of Confucius, Walt Whitman and Kierkegaard. On the personal side, I was discovering the joys of (sinful) sex while attending a "house church" led by a Jews for Jesus-type friend and paling around with some Muslim students. But Nietzsche? Wasn't he the "God is Dead" guy? I quickly found he was much, much more, and I've returned to his writings off and on over the long journey out of faith. At this point I read him now and again during my "meditation" times (my wife knows this means while I'm in the bathroom sanctuary). This morning I came upon more delightfully upsetting lines from Mr. N's little book of pithy sayings called, Human, All Too Human (HATH, 1878). He was very good at the delightfully upsetting stuff. In this passage of troubling truthtelling he is discussing a "Substitute for Religion." He says that some want to simply replace Religion with Philosophy, but the move from religious to scientific thinking can be a "dangerous leap" and actually "inadvisable." The leap, that is. But, he reasons, "transitional spheres of thought" are necessary sometimes. His suggestion? Art. To move out of religious ideas that "originate only from errors of reason," a person needs a little help, a bridge, an alternative path that isn't some dramatic leap of un-faith (as opposed to Kierkegaard's famous leap of faith).
 "It is preferable to use art for this transition. . . . Beginning with art, one can more easily move on to a truly liberating philosophical science" (HATH, 27).

That's a taste of Mr. N. And here I make an incredibly wild connection to one of Friedrich's Scottish-American contemporaries who led my final exit from faith. Not a philosopher; not an atheist; not an artist. A Mr. M. . . .Muir. . . .John Muir. A fine freethinking trail guide for the wild journey out of "foggy city thinking" to the great wide open, fresh air artwork of Nature. I'm wrong, though. Muir was indeed an artist--with words. No one could tell a story or use his lips to paint a picture quite like the Mountain Man Muir. His fantastic tales of climbing cliffs and trees, of riding avalanches and facing bears, whispering to flowers and singing with birds, all were shaped into stories to inspire generations of people to get involved, to participate, to care for the Chapel of the Cosmos. As I like to say, we are each, as humans made of humus with a pinch of humor (for fertilizer?), called to be Nature Chaplains--whatever that means. We need to discover what that means.

Whether sleeping in a cemetery in Georgia or sleeping on a blanket in the sierra snow with Teddy Roosevelt, Muir was truly crazy. . .crazy in love with the earth and everything earthly. And his words, his art, changed things. Politicians got agitated. National Parks were created. He didn't distract people to other worlds, to the fancies and fantasies of faith. He, like Thoreau, had no interest in the inventions of heavens, some imagined above, beyond, behind the universe. Nature was heaven enough, religion enough, scripture enough. Muir's was not a super-natural faith. His was an all-natural, organic, crunchy and biodegradable trust that Life itself was super enough.

Here are a few elements of Muir's "faith" as I see it:
  1. A light but serious belief that beliefs are distractions from the simple and most wonderful gifts of life
  2. A full-out belly-flop baptism in the beauty of Nature
  3. A pure, endless delight in the world, the cosmos, all that is and can be explored
  4.  A student's heart to "sit on Nature's knee" and learn from the Greatest Teacher
  5. An evangelical enthusiasm to convert the masses to preserving the only home we share with each other and all other wild life

How did he preach this wild gospel (a kind of anti-gospel)? From the pulpit of the forests and mountains. "I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness" (Wilderness Essays). Though he memorized the Bible as a boy, his scripture was written along the ridge-lines and recited in the waterfalls. Was Muir a Pantheist? Maybe. Did he believe in God? Yes, with a radical (literally rooted and grounded) twist. "No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty" (Journals). When we look at the world more closely, more reverently if you will, we "behold a new heaven and new earth and are born again, as if we had gone on a pilgrimage to some far-off holy land" (Journals). This bearded incarnation of Thoreau's "saunterer" felt that every step in the wilderness left a bootprint on sacred ground.

Muir, like Nietzsche (strange to say), gave us hints, pointed the way down the paths to a way, a truth, a life, greater than anything Religion has ever offered. Is there a Creator? Of course there is: Nature. Is there a Paradise? Look around. Heaven is under our feet (and stuck on our shoe!). Is there a cure, a salvation, for our humanity? Only being more human. Is there anything left after faith is left behind? Only countless trails to be discovered, explored, wandered by every wanderer with a pack full of wonder (and the adventure reaches from our body and brain to the farthest point of light in space).

Now, before I head off down another deer trail into the unknown, here's an old, wrinkled map left by the crazy artist Muir:

"Go now and then for fresh life--if most of humanity must go through this town stage of development--just as divers hold their breath and come ever and anon to the surface to breathe. . . . Go whether or not you have faith. . . . Form parties, if you must be social, to go to the snow-flowers in winter, to the sun-flowers in summer. . . . Anyway, go up and away for life; be fleet!" (Journals)

Can you think of a better benediction?


Chris Highland
(former Presbyterian Minister; former Interfaith Chaplain; author of Life After Faith, Jesus and John Muir, Meditations of John Muir, and other works. www.naturetemple.wordpress.com)

Website: http://www.chrishighland.wordpress.com
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo
Post a Comment
Read more

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our
Post a Comment
Read more

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette
Post a Comment
Read more

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we
Post a Comment
Read more

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not
Post a Comment
Read more

I can fix ignorance; I can't fix stupid!

By Bob O ~ I 'm an atheist and a 52-year veteran of public education. I need not tell anyone the problems associated with having to "duck" the "Which church do you belong to?" with my students and their parents. Once told by a parent that they would rather have a queer for their sons' teacher than an atheist! Spent HOURS going to the restroom right when prayers were performed: before assemblies, sports banquets, "Christmas Programs", awards assemblies, etc... Told everyone that I had a bladder problem. And "yes" it was a copout to many of you, but the old adage (yes, it's religious) accept what you can't change, change that which you can and accept the strength to know the difference! No need arguing that which you will never change. Enough of that. What I'd like to impart is my simple family chemistry. My wife is a Baptist - raised in a Baptist Orphanage (whole stories there) and is a believer. She did not know my religi
Post a Comment
Read more