John Muir: Spiritual Writings

Modern Spiritual Masters

by Tim Flinders

"Certainly, whether you are a believer or a sceptic, but are in any way drawn to nature, this collection will make you want to head for the woods to find out why." --John Muir Trust Journal Spring 2014
"John Muir was an unorthodox thinker in every realm, including the religious; but he was deeply open to the ecstatic experience of the wild. He gave us a new vocabulary, one that has opened eyes and hearts ever since. His wild prayers and preaching will move you enormously."--Bill McKibben
The founder of the Sierra Club and "Father of the National Parks," John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist who sparked the modern environmental movement. As his letters, journals, and other writings show, Muir's extraordinary affinity with the natural world was grounded in a deep spirituality.
Living for months, even years, in the wilderness, he experienced a deep communion with the sacred. Muir's contemplations on the natural world are filled with mystical intuition of God's reality: "Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love."
In exploring this little-known aspect of Muir's work, this volume contributes to a distinctly American strain of spirituality that finds an echo in today's environmental movement. For those who have read and admired Muir and those who want to discover him, John Muir: Spiritual Writings offers a new and inspiring look at the man and his spirituality.

Genres: Nature, Spirituality, Philosophy, Theology

140 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2013

Reviews

[Elizabeth Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

helpful introduction, generally good selection organized chronologically so you helpfully experience the development of Muir's relationship to his wild places. Muir's own reflections are often startlingly beautiful, and represent a particular sort of relationship to the Creator I find unbelievably desirable (if not a bit transcendentalist). Reckoning with Muir's explicitly spiritual relationship with the natural world has profound implications for how we continue to do the work of conservation he pioneered in the States.

There is something profoundly romantic and attractive to me about a life lived with disregard to conventional society (Muir spent his formative years as a shepherd in Yosemite, against the urging of friends and family to return to society and put his genius to more "worthwhile" endeavors), and if anything Muir's particular version of it produced beautiful art and the origins of taking conservation seriously in American politics. At the same time though, there is something profoundly sad about getting to know someone who found it impossible to know God anywhere beyond the literal high places. Muir's obsessive love for the mountains, it seems through reading his journals, ultimately precluded him from knowing the other sorts of more figurative mountains Jesus calls us to.

"the King tree and I have sworn eternal love--sworn it without swearing, and I have taken the sacrament with the Douglas squirrel, drank Sequoia wine, Sequoia blood"

"Oh these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting one at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God"

"Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber 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 seems the Lord himself"

[Erwin Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim Flinders’ John Muir: Spiritual Writings captures the life of one of America’s foremost environmentalist. Was Muir a mystical pantheist? Was he a transcendentalist? Or was he a religious naturalist? From the selections of Muir’s writings one thing was clear, he deeply adored nature. Many of his descriptions of the landscape in the Southern United States, Yosemite’s valley and river, and Alaska Muir wrote passionately about nature. He sang praises not only of trees, streams, and mountains, but of valleys, rocks, and pebbles, and the wind and snow that swept across the American landscape.
But what was revealing was Muir’s recklessness and irresponsibility. Often he slept in the cold on slabs of rock, fasted throughout the night, had only bread and tea, suffered accidents - missed falling to his death, but still he persevered in embracing nature’s wildness in all its glory. To a contemporary mountaineer such ventures would be unadvisable to undertake without adequate safeguards. Yet Muir went against the advice of his mentor Mrs. Jeanne Carr, and others he met and worked with who advised him not to continue living a solitude life.
According to Flinders’ selections Muir was definitely not a pantheist. He never did consider nature to be God, as all in all. He seemed more to be a transcendentalist by how he related to nature with references to Jesus Christ. If one was to categorize Muir’s religious beliefs this would fall more along the lines of a religious naturalist, for he viewed nature as God’s manifestations in the world, the mountains as cathedrals with altars.

[Cherie Dellwo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book quite interesting. The introduction to John Muir's life was fascinating. He was quite an unusual man with eclectic interests and talents. He found a deep spiritual life when sauntering, not hiking, through the wilderness. He didn't hunt or fish so he existed on bread and water and sometimes tea. He usually had no blanket and would just sleep on the ground. Perhaps, all of that lent to his deeply moving spiritual experiences. He would climb mountains without any equipment just searching for hand and toe holds. Once when he was stuck with no way up or down he had the following experience: Instinct, or a Guardian Angel-call it what you will - came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through a microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft upon wings, my deliverance could not have been more complete.

[Jeff Bradbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth it. Good insights into John Muir's heart and mind and soul.

[Stevejs298 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I have read in the Modern Spiritual Masters Series, and I was very impressed. John Muir is a remarkable person.

[Clairette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely! Picked this up on an impulse at the library. Reading it was medicine for the soul that misses the majesty of the American West. I learned why John Muir is important and understand why so many trails in WA are named after him. These excerpts are poetic, it is unsurprising that their competent author managed to rally people to preserve wonders of the West.

It is funny that I read this at the same time as The Alchemist. Both are tales of young men eschewing all responsibility in the pursuit of their divinely-inspired path, taking what comes and seeing the wonder and connectedness of life even in inanimate elements. I am curious about the hearth-side version of this experience, less lauded but surely present.

[Duff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exceptional probing into Muir's journals and letters to chart his early development as a naturalist and how spiritually connected his thinking was from the beginning. Tim Flinders organized the material chronologically and that gives a great sense of Muir's spiritual growth. I found that I needed to frequently return to earlier pages to get the scope of that development. Not sure if it would benefit by an index, but I definitely think Tim should think about a follow up organized by how he sees Muir's spiritual growth and his analysis of the material. I loved Tim's introduction and I would enjoy and benefit a great deal from a much expanded presentation.

[Al Gritten · Rating 4 out of 5]

This man has an amazing perspective on nature and spirituality. This is a must read for those who recognize the sacredness of nature and for whom the idea of being in nature attunes them to the indwelling Spirit. The book is well edited and well worth the read for the nature lover as well as the contemplative.

[Kate]

"The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness."