Monday with Muir: Shoreless and Boundless

"We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all."

John Muir

"SHORELESS and BOUNDLESS"....I think of great movements, such as animal migrations that span thousands of miles, waterfalls that drop thousands of feet, and the wind that endlessly circles the earth. These are things that cannot be bound or shored. They carry a force and momentum beyond anything made by the hands of man. So too is the power and love of God. It cannot be bound or shored and there is no border it cannot cross. Perhaps it is the political and cultural climate of today that draws my heart toward the words "SHORELESS and BOUNDLESS". In some ways our country and world are greatly divided and in other ways they are more connected than ever before. Regardless of this, God is moving, as He always has been. He is moving over us and through us and in us "IN GRAND AND UNDIVIDED CURRENTS...".

Below is the letter that this quote was pulled from. The correspondence was between Catherine Merrill and John Muir in 1872.

To Miss Catharine Merrill

New Sentinel Hotel Yosemite Valley June 9th, 1872

Catharine Merrill My Dear Friend

I am very happy to hear your hand language once more, but in some places I am black and blue with your hurricane of scolding.

I [am] glad you so much enjoy your work (not scolding), but am sorry to hear of the languor which clearly speaks of struggles and long continued toil of nerve-exhausting kind. I hope you will not persist in self-sacrifice of so destructive a species. The sea will do you good; bathe in it and bask in sunshine and allow the pure and generous currents of universal uncolleged beauty to blow about your bones and about all the overworked wheels of your mind. I know very well how you toil and toil, striving against lassitude and the cloudy weather of discouraging cares with a brave heart, your efforts toned by the blessedness of doing good; but do not, I pray you, destroy your health. The Lord understands his business and has plenty of tools, and does not require over-exertion of any kind.

I wish you could come here and rest a year in the simple unmingled Love fountains of God. You would then return to your scholars with fresh truth gathered and absorbed from pines and waters and deep singing winds, and you would find that they all sang of fountain Love just as did Jesus Christ and all of pure God manifest in whatever form. You say that good men are "nearer to the heart of God than are woods and fields, rocks and waters" Such distinctions and measurements seem strange to me. Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all.

You say some other things that I don't believe at all, but I have no room to say them nay; further--I don't stab the old grannies where I wasted so much time, the colleges of all kinds, "Christian" and common, West and Northwest, with their long tails of pretensions. I only said a few words of free sunshine, using the dim old clouds of learning for a background.

My love to Mina and Mrs. Moores and the dear younglings. The falls are in song gush and the light is balmed with summer love. Would I could send some. I shall be sure to keep you an open letter-road so that you can see your Merrill whom you all commit so confidingly to my care. Hoping that you will get strength by the sea and enjoy all the spiritual happiness you deserve.

I am ever cordially Your friend

John Muir