Celebrating Amos Niven Wilder's 127th Birthday

Born 127 years ago on September 18, 1895, here are Amos Wilder's closing words to his annotated curriculum vitae, found in Imagining the Real (1978), written when he was eighty-three.

"I recognize with the great modern emancipators and iconoclasts how many old tyrannies in society and in the soul need to be demasked. I recognize how much inhumanity can be accumulated in religious traditions which once were liberating. I recognize how parochial our Western mental and spiritual habits can be, and what varieties of human creativity and wisdom can be enjoyed in other cultures. Therefore I do not defend particular dogmas, and I recognize that many men and women live by a deeper faith than they can formulate. But my war experience [WWI] and my life experience have seemed to teach me some priorities. One of these is that salvation has to be political; it is not enough for the soul to be enlightened. Another is that the liberation and emancipation are not enough, as we envisage them. There is a deeper liberation called for which costs a great deal more."

Amos Niven Wilder outside his office cabin in Blue Hill, Maine.