August 11, 2004
Nature
from - smijer
I shouldn't do two Thoughts in a row from Emerson. I don't want to give the wrong impression, what with all this talk of the unitarian church and all... But...
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
The take home point from this entire essay (whose many faults include its anticipation of New Age mysticism) is that real appreciation of nature means appreciation of ones' peculiar relationship to the world, and ultimately, everything and everyone it it - including onesself.
::Posted by smijer at August 11, 2004 06:39 PM
In my opinion the most important thing is to "be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be"
Now this philosophy goes over like the proverbial lead turd in a punchbowl with my Christian brethren but I have arrived at my theological conclusions on my own. It is personal to me. It is sacred to me. It is mine.
It was Mencken that said "theology is the art of turning that which is unknowable into that which is not worth knowing." No truer words have ever been spoken.
Work out your own soul salvation with fear and trembling. That is what I have done. That is what I am doing and that is what I will continue to do.
I highly recommend it to everybody.
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Posted by boortzlistener on August 11, 2004 09:21 PM Link to comment |
Work out your own soul salvation with fear and trembling.
I would, but I find I can't think straight when I'm scared. ;)
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Posted by smijer on August 11, 2004 09:57 PM Link to comment |
If the truth be known a better translation probably would have been "work out your own salvation with sober reflection and quite meditation" I had an old eccentric preacher tell me that hate was not the opposite of love. He said that fear was the opposite of love.
I had never thought of it that way but it makes sense. Reverence and fear are two different things.
You can revere nature and you can also fear nature. It all depends on how close you are to the tornado.
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Posted by boortzlistener on August 12, 2004 09:05 AM Link to comment |
And I assume you've heard the old saw that the opposite of love is indifference...
Another difference is between working out your own place in the world and working out your own "salvation" - in that the latter presupposes that there is some thing or another that it is particularly important for one to be saved from - generally some kind of dreaded and torturous afterlife. Some people say that it is "sin" that people need to be saved from, but I think they really mean the torturous and dreaded afterlife. After all, have you ever known anyone who was "saved from sin" in the sense that they never screwed up any more?
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Posted by smijer on August 12, 2004 10:21 AM Link to comment |
I guess you could say that I believe that "my place in this world" and "my salvation" are one and the same to me.
I do not subscribe to the "eternal torment" dogma and I don't spend an inordinate amount of time worrying or wondering about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or where and how I will spend "eternity". If eternity exists then it is not something that I must look forward to, by definition it is something that I am currently standing in the middle of (only technically eternity cannot have a middle)
My mother once told me that when a jerk gets saved you usually wind up with a saved jerk so no, I am not aware of anybody being "saved" and then being without sin.
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Posted by boortzlistener on August 12, 2004 11:01 AM Link to comment |
