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“Earth’s crammed with heaven”

“Earth’s crammed with heaven”

Last updated on: February 16, 2025 at 10:45 pm by Dan Peterson

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“Earth’s crammed with heaven” 2025-02-16T22:45:35-07:00 Dan Peterson

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In my former missionary tracting area, Lauterbrunnen in the Berner Oberland of Switzerland — perhaps, in my judgment, the most beautiful landscape on Planet Earth. I post it here as an illustration of the point of this blog entry, but for the soothing power of splendid natural beauty.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

It’s a cold and dreary day today in central Utah, but, for some reason, I’ve been thinking about what many religious believers take to be God’s self-disclosure in the beauties of nature. So, of course, two favorite poems from Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) come to mind. The first is “God’s Grandeur”:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

The second is his “Pied Beauty”:

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.

But I also think of this passage from Song of Myself, 31, by Walt Whitman (1819-1892), which is a not quite explicit theistic argument from design:

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

However, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) observed, not everybody perceives the divine in nature:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

I’m reminded of an episode in the Book of Mormon. In Alma 44, the Nephites under Moroni have been fighting with the Lamanites, whose commander is Zerahemnah. The Nephites are prevailing, and Moroni calls a halt to the battle in order to talk:

And it came to pass that they did stop and withdrew a pace from them. And Moroni said unto Zerahemnah: Behold, Zerahemnah, that we do not desire to be men of blood. Ye know that ye are in our hands, yet we do not desire to slay you. . . .

But now, ye behold that the Lord is with us; and ye behold that he has delivered you into our hands. And now I would that ye should understand that this is done unto us becauseof our religion and our faith in Christ. And now ye see that ye cannot destroy this our faith.

Now ye see that this is the true faith of God; yea, ye see that God will support, and keep, and preserve us, so long as we are faithful unto him, and unto our faith, and our religion; and never will the Lord suffer that we shall be destroyed except we should fall into transgression and deny our faith. . . . (Alma 44:1, 3-4)

To which Zerahemnah responds, in part, as follows:

Behold, we are not of your faith; we do not believe that it is God that has delivered us into your hands; but we believe that it is your cunning that has preserved you from our swords. Behold, it is your breastplates and your shields that have preserved you. (Alma 44:9)

In my opinion, both Zerahemnah’s and Moroni’s explanations for the Nephite military success are plausible. Each simply reflects a different perspective. Was the victory of the Nephites due to their superior armor? Yes. Very possibly. But that superior armor existed because it was part of Moroni’s divinely-inspired efforts to prepare for the conflict. Both accounts seem to me defensible.

So, too, a rainbow or a beautiful sunset — or a “common bush” or a painting or, for that matter, a human — can be described in purely physical terms. What are the physics of rainbows? What elements in the air give a sunset its hues? What are the genus and species and dimensions of the bush? What are the dimensions of the painting? How many brushstrokes or daubs of paint per square centimeter? How tall is the man? How much does he weigh? What are the colors of his skin, hair, and eyes? And it’s beyond question that such facts are important for certain purposes. But not for all. And they’re not exhaustive. A Rembrandt isn’t valuable because of the quantity of canvas and paint of which it’s composed. A Beethoven symphony can’t be meaningfully described by counting its notes. The beauty of Switzerland’s Berner Oberland can’t be fully comprehended merely by a factual recitation of the relevant mineralogical, geological, and botanical data.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with sitting around and plucking blackberries. Sometimes, though, it’s appropriate to see heaven, and to remove one’s shoes.

“The Empty Tomb,” a stained glass window in St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, in Columbus, Ohio
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I’m very pleased that this message from President Oaks is so completely consistent with what I wrote in my blog entry here on Friday. I’m happy to confirm that the First Presidency and I are on the same page with regard to this topic (as also with respect to others!): “‘Greater love’: Apostle says resurrection is literal and universal, calls for Easter emphasis: President Dallin H. Oaks says the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is ‘the most glorious event in history,’ challenges families to establish Easter traditions”

After all those years, Martin Harris and Lucy Harris were finally together again, and happy, at the 2021 premiere of the “Witnesses” theatrical film. It’s good to know that their story has a happy ending.

The answer might surprise you, given how implacably hostile she eventually was toward Joseph Smith, the translation of the Book of Mormon, and even her own husband, Martin: “Episode 25: Did Lucy Harris Support the Book of Mormon?”

Witnesses of the Book of Mormon—Insights Episode 25: Early on, Lucy Harris was a supporter of the work, but later she fell out with the Smiths—and with her own husband. Who was Lucy Harris? This is Episode 25 of a series compiled from the many interviews conducted during the course of the Witnesses film project. . . . These additional resources are hosted by Camrey Bagley Fox, who played Emma Smith in Witnesses, as she introduces and visits with a variety of experts. These individuals answer questions or address accusations against the witnesses, also helping viewers understand the context of the times in which the witnesses lived. This week we feature Daniel C. Peterson, President of the Interpreter Foundation and Executive Producer of Witnesses. For more information, go to https://witnessesofthebookofmormon.org/. Learn about the documentary movie Undaunted—Witnesses of the Book of Mormon at https://witnessesundaunted.com/.

And please don’t forget that Undaunted is now available for free streaming at The Witnesses Initiative. Also at The Witnesses Initiative, the Witnesses film itself is available for free streaming but only through the remainder of this month. Viewing these films would be an excellent way to spend part of your Sabbath. Viewing them would also be an excellent activity for Family Home Evening on Monday. But don’t procrastinate!

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