Into the Woods with John Muir and Celtic Christianity

INTO THE WOODS with John Muir & Celtic Christianity

by Ryan McKenzie “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life."

John Muir from Our National Parks, 1901

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S THE DIRECTOR OF MINISTRY at a Christian Conference and Camping facility deep in the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountains just south of Yosemite National Park, I live in a world that cannot escape the lyrical commentaries of John Muir. Here is a man who was able to craft together words in a way that still leaves his readers tasting and smelling the scenery he describes; words that capture the heart and imagination, beckoning us out of the cities and business of our lives to discover the grace a rhythm of a world out from which our very substance was taken and in so doing to discover something essential of the nature of God and of ourselves.

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IN MANY CHRISTIAN CIRCLES, however, Muir is not given his due. Instead he is often cast off as a mere romantic and coupled together with folks like Thoreau and Emerson as a transcendentalist. But as a subject that needs much more room to fully elaborate upon than is given here - Muir’s words and even theology often divert from the Transcendental agenda and instead find kinship woven together with an early Celtic Christian ethos. Let us explore a small example.

THE ABOVE QUOTE IS ONE OF MY favorites by John Muir in his landmark publication, Our National Parks. Far from

being a quick jot about the niceties of a day spent in the woods, Muir taps into something essential about humanity’s makeup. It is not surprising, nor is it anything new to suggest that time spent in nature contains massive benefits in lowering our stress levels and improving one’s over all health. Listening to wind running through the trees and feeling it brush past your skin or watching the effects of light playing through a canopy of aspen leaves while inhaling oxygen free of exhaust is something that we all long for - both young and old. But even more - as the ancient Hebrew poet(s) who wrote the creation accounts of Genesis understood - we share a connection with the basic elements that form all of creation.

OUR STORY, ANTECEDENT TO THE fall, relates God fashioning humanity from the substance of creation itself before

that time spent in nature somehow brings us home? What exactly is “home”? What does it suggest pertaining to where we come from and where we are ultimately going?

What is Muir getting at, and how does it run parallel to the assertions of early Celtic Christianity?

TO THIS WE TURN TO HISTORY. THE Celtic mission movement, started by St. Patrick, began on the isolated isle of Ireland on the outskirts of the crumbling Roman Empire in the early 5th century, far removed and sheltered from the chaos and violence spreading across the continent of western Europe. Against the pleas of his friends and family, Patrick pursued what he believed was his calling and returned to the people who had once kidnapped and enslaved him, setting to work imparting a New Story throughout the rough and barbaric Gaelic,

“OUR STORY, ANTECEDENT TO THE FALL, RELATES GOD FASHIONING HUMANITY FROM THE SUBSTANCE OF CREATION ITSELF BEFORE GENERATING LIFE WITHIN THE NEWLY FORMED VESSEL BY BREATHING INTO ITS NOSTRILS. THAT THE IMAGERY USED HERE IS EARTHY IS JUST A BIT OF AN UNDERSTATEMENT, AND IT STARTS A CONVERSATION ABOUT HOW NATURE HAS SOMETHING TO TEACH US BOTH ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT OURSELVES." generating life within the newly formed vessel by breathing into its nostrils. That the imagery used here is earthy is just a bit of an understatement, and it starts a conversation about how nature has something to teach us both about God and about ourselves. But still, how does this suggest as Muir does,

pagan countryside. The story, however, wasn’t just new for the Irish, though. It was new - or perhaps renewed - for the collapsing Roman world as well.

HISTORIAN THOMAS CAHILL WRITES, “Patrick’s gift to the Irish was his

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Christianity - the first de-Romanized Christianity in human history, a Christianity without the sociopolitical baggage of the Greco-Roman world, a Christianity that completely inculturated itself into the Irish scene.” It was a Christianity that embraced the Irish acknowledgement of sacred landscape, where hallowed hilltops and sanctified oak groves, rather than any building made by man, set the scene for devotion and worship. The mystical bent of the Celt to whom Patrick and his followers would appeal was especially evident in the great love, respect and even fear of nature.

The Celtic evangelists knew this, embraced it, and utilized it to proclaim a gospel that nature has the power to reveal, giving the evangelists a platform to proclaim

God, himself. Therefore, using chapter one of John to frame their position, that in the beginning was the word and that through the word all things came into being, the Church asserted that Creation was fashioned out of the “substance” of God - Creatio Ex Deo. In this view the elements of creation are not, therefore, neutral, nor was creation set in motion by a distant deity. Rather, for the Celtic Christians, the universe is an expression of God, not only because God spoke it into being, but also because it was birthed from His very heart, and if you listen close enough, they would add, you may still very well hear the beating of that heart.

BUT HOW ARE WE TO UNDERSTAND this theology in light of the fact that we

PATRICK’S WAS A CHRISTIANITY THAT EMBRACED THE IRISH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF SACRED LANDSCAPE, WHERE HALLOWED HILLTOPS AND SANCTIFIED OAK GROVES, RATHER THAN ANY BUILDING MADE BY MAN, SET THE SCENE FOR DEVOTION AND WORSHIP. Creation, Covenant, Community and New Creation while maintaining the centrality of nature’s position within the Irish religious consciousness.

EMBRACING THE TEACHINGS OF Irenaeus of Lyons, a second century Christian Father who notably integrated nature and the Sacred within his theology, the Celtic Church stood opposed to the doctrine of Creatio Ex Nihilo, the belief that God created the universe out of nothing.

Along with Irenaeus, the Celtic Church fathers asserted that there was something before the beginning - that something being

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live in a post Genesis 3 “fallen” world where God’s intentions for creation have been twisted by humanity’s sin, and our connection with the very ground from which we came has been severed? The Celtic Church very much maintained this position, and to answer it, they embraced the atonement theory of Recapitulation. Among the accomplishments of Christ’s life death and resurrection, Christ inaugurates New Creation. As the apostle John asserts, Jesus’ resurrection is his 8th miracle - symbolic for an 8th day - a new day - a new “first day” where Mary, in her confusion, doesn’t recognize Jesus and supposes him to be

the gardener. Well - in a very real sense that is exactly who Jesus is - the gardener, the renewed humanity, the new Adam, who recapitulates - restarts - creation by inaugurating God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven - a reality that will come to climax in Jesus’ reappearing.

THROUGH THE THEOLOGICAL LENS of the early Celtic Church, John Muir’s assertion that “going to the mountains is going home” takes on a deeper dimension than mere romantic sentimentalism, because Muir, whether he intends to or not, both unites us to our creation narrative while also pointing us to the telos of New Creation. We were pulled from elements that were perhaps pulled from God himself, and we will discover eternity not on some etherial distant cloud in the sky, but rather upon and throughout a renovated creation where the glory of Christ stands at the center. Therefore when we retreat into the

mountains, unplugging from the massive amounts of media that bombard us from day to day, disconnecting for a while from the careers that would seek to reorient where we find our very identities, we find time to hope and to pray, we find a place to meditate and reflect on scripture while striving to hear God’s heartbeat in the forest around us. We find home.

RYAN MCKENZIE graduated from Fuller with a Masters of Theology in 2012 and is now the Director of Ministries at Calvin Crest Conferences, a Christian camping and Conference center located in the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountains just south of Yosemite National Park. The ministry at Calvin Crest is centered on utilizing the incredibly beautiful grounds - complete with Granite domes, Giant Sequoia groves, dense Cedar forests, and alpine meadows - as a class room to study what the natural sciences can tell us about theology. Calvin Crest hosts guests groups, weekend retreats, seasonal Divine Office Prayer retreats, and Summer Camp for all ages.

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” - John Muir