>OTOH, my primary care guru Ralph Waldo Emerson, too, finds the
>Bible's alpha-to-omega solemnity tiresome.
While RWE himself was a laugh a minute! This bit cracks me up every time!
>Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a
>clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special
>good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.I am glad to the
>brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the
>snake his slough , and at what period soever of life, is always a
>child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations
>of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is
>dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a
>thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I
>feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no
>calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair.
>Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air,
>and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I
>become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents
>of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle
>of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and
>accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or
>servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of
>uncontained and immortal beauty.In the wilderness, I find something
>more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil
>landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man
>beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
I once wrote several pages on the "trans/parent I-ball," but those were different times.
Doug