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Unaccustomed Earth

Monday, 2 Jun 2008 at 9:13 am

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn out soil. My children … shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, ???????? ????? ????????The Scarlet Letter

1 Comment

  1. Jonathan Blake said,

    June 2, 2008 @ 9:25 am

    I didn’t want to add this comment to the post itself; perhaps it’s a silly distinction, but I wanted the quote to be free to mean what it will without my interference.

    Today, it makes me think about Mormonism. My family has been Mormon for a half dozen generations. I feel like I’m transplanting myself in new lands, leaving behind the soil of Mormonism which has become, for me, a poor degredation of it’s former self. Not that early Mormonism was great and good, but it was certainly more alive.

    Mormonism has too many answers: it’s a cul-de-sac for inquiry. It’s a place where most find a refuge from thinking about the hard questions. Despite its nominal emphasis on personal revelation, it has become a roadblock to direct personal experience of the world.

    For me, the world is brighter and more wonderful beyond the pat answers of my youth.

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