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