Real Church

     I watched "Jesus Camp" for the second time the other day, and in it there's this little girl who talks about how some people go to "dead churches", as in churches that God doesn't visit because the people's hearts aren't in the right place.  (It's in this section, 4:05.)
     But I think... I think they're ALL dead churches.  Opal Whitely at 5 years old wrote in her journal, "To me all God's out-of-doors is one grand cathedral."  I think she's right.  You have to find church.  Good places to look include under fir trees and near creek beds.  

     What made me think of dead churches and Opal Whitely's real churches was reading some Ralph Waldo Emmerson.  When he was young he began as a minister, but then he left it writing in his journal, "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers."  I think he is right too.

     I love Opal Whitely by the way.  Her writing is absolutely the most heart warming stuff.  Here's an excerpt I found online:

By and by, I came to a log. It was a nice little log. It was as long as three pigs as long as Peter Paul Rubens. [Peter Paul Rubens is the name of her pet pig] I climbed upon it. I so did to look more looks about. The wind did blow in a real quick way -- he made music all around. I danced on the log. It is so much a big amount of joy to dance on a log when the wind does play the harps in the forest. Then do I dance on tiptoe. I wave greetings to the plant-bush folks that do dance all about. Today a grand pine tree did wave its arms to me, and the bush branches patted my cheek in a friendly way. The wind again did blow back my curls -- they clasped the fingers of the bush-people most near. I did turn around to untangle them. It is most difficult to dance on tiptoe on a log when one's curls are in a tangle with the branches of a friendly bush that grew near unto the log, and does make bows to one while the wind doth blow. When I did turn to untangle my curls, I saw a silken cradle in a hazel branch. I have thinks that the wind did just tangle my curls so I would have seeing of that cradle. It was cream, with a hazel leaf halfway round it. I put it to my ear, and I did listen. It had a little voice. It was not a tone voice; it was a heart voice. While I did listen, I did feel its feels. It had lovely ones. And then I did hurry away in the way that does lead to the house of the girl that has no seeing. I went that way so she too might know its feels, and hear its heart voice. She does so like to feel things as she has seeing by feels.

     Oh and speaking of incredible journals, I just bought a book of excerpts from Edward Abbey's journal called Confessions of a Barbarian.  Good Gracious!  It was $7, which is far more than I like to spend at Half Price Books for a single book, but it's sooooooooooooo good!  It's like riveting and gut-wrenchingly personal, witty and eloquent in this uncouth way.  :D  I'm in love with him.  I mean if he wasn't so terrible with women (and 20 years dead) I would write love letters to his uncivilized ass.

Mmmmmmm... I love John Muir. :D :D :D

"..One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made, That this is still the morning of creation. That mountains, long concieved, are now being born, brought to life by the glaciers, channels traced for rivers, basins hollowed for lakes. That moraine soil is being ground and outspread for coming plants...while the finest part of the grist, seen hastening far out to sea, is being stored away in the darkness, and builded, particle on particle, cementing and crystallizing to make the mountains and valleys and plains of other landscapes, which, like fluent pulsing water, rise and fall, and pass through the ages in endless rhythm and beauty."

"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while care will drop off like Autumn leaves."

"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn, and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn as the round Earth rolls."

"When I first caught sight of it over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been weary since."

"I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. "

"The mountains are calling and I must go."

"I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in "creation's dawn." The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day."

"None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild."

"I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in."