I am thrilled to be taking a course of the thought of Emerson and Baldwin this term with Jeff Stout and Eddie Glaude. In some of our earliest readings, Emerson suggests a kind of typological spiritual structuralism that I find very intriguing, especially given his reflexive stance against orthodoxy.
"There is still another aspect under which the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely, as it becomes an object of the intellect. Beside the relation of things to virtue, they have a relation to thought. The intellect searches out the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, and without the colors of affection. The intellectual and the active powers seem to succeed each other, and the exclusive activity of the one, generates the exclusive activity of the other. There is something unfriendly in each to the other, but they are like the alternate periods of feeding and working in animals; each prepares and will be followed by the other. Therefore does beauty, which, in relation to actions, as we have seen, comes unsought, and comes because it is unsought, remain for the apprehension and pursuit of the intellect; and then again, in its turn, of the active power. Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Language" in Nature
I just got finished with the Louis l'amour book Kilrone. Several lines spoke to me as a church planter in the wild west. Here's one: "In a lifetime on the frontier Hank Laban had managed to keep his scalp. He had held onto his hair by fighting when he could, running when he could no longer fight, or lying quiet when outnumbered. He was a disciple of the philosophy that nothing has to be done all at once." Pg.73
I'm sure they have Louis l'amour classes at Princeton, so you'll read this before your done. It's a classic.
Blessings!
Posted by: Sean | February 05, 2010 at 04:07 PM