Grant Wiley – Three Days with John Muir (student choice)

This is creation. All this is going on today, only men are blind to see it. They think only of food. They are not content to provide three meals a day; they must have enough for a thousand meals. And so they build ships to carry the food that they call commerce, and they build houses to store food in, and other houses to buy and sell it in, and houses to eat it in, and load themselves down with the care of it so that they cannot get away. They cannot pause long enough to go out into the wilderness where God has provided every sparrow enough to eat and to spare, and contemplate for even an hour the wonderful world that they live in. You say that what I write may bring this beauty to the hearts of those that do not get out to see it. They have no right to it the good Lord put those things here as a free gift that he who chooses may take with joy. and he who will not walk out of the smoke of the cities to see them has no right to them.

-       John Muir (Three Days with John Muir)


I happened upon this quote from John Muir recently and I was appalled by how much it related to our readings from Norman Wirzba and some of the discussions we have been having in class. It seems that people have begun to view creation as “natural resources” which should be exploited in order to feed the economic system we take part in. While I am not against economic growth, I think this quote centers upon the issues with the way that we view Creation. We see it as something to be taken, something that belongs to us. It is not something that we have imagination towards, in the words of Norman Wirzba. While Muir certainly had some interesting theological opinions, I fully agree with the statement that he is making here. I hope that the church as a whole can change their view and by extension relationship with Creation in order to better reflect the way that God views Creation. 

-  February 25, 2021


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