ALL THINGS
“A stick, a stone
It’s the end of the road,
It’s feeling alone,
It’s the weight of your load.
It’s a sliver of glass,
It is life, it’s the sun,
It is night, it is death,
It’s a trap, it’s a gun
A flower that blooms
A fox in the brush
A knot in the wood
The song of the thrush
The mystery of life,
The steps in the hall
The sound of the wind
And the waterfall.
It’s the moon floating free
It’s the curve of the slope
It’s a beam, it’s a void,
It’s a reason for hope.
And the riverbank sings
of the Waters of March,
It’s the end of all strain,
It’s the joy in your heart.”
If you want to understand the meaning Alma 30:44 (“All things denote that there is a God”) look no further than those lyrics from the famous Bossa Nova, The Waters of March, by Antonio Carlos Jobim. During my flight home from seeing my father in Idaho this week, I alternated between David Byrne and Susannah McCorkle’s versions, listening to them on repeat. Staring through the smudge of the former passenger’s forehead imprint on the scratched, plastic window, I viewed the landscape below, listening to those lyrics; I couldn’t help but sense the sublime and how small I was compared to all of it. Snow covered mountains, blue sky, cotton clouds, vast open space, all of it made me ponder God’s splendor and goodness for such gifts.
But then, in the middle of this rapturous scene, and literally in the middle of nowhere, I spied a concrete refinery of some sort, pumping grey smoke out of a tall, cinder block chimney. It seemed so out of place that if an artist were to paint this scene, they surely would’ve deleted the structure all together opting to depict only the surrounding natural beauty. But I couldn’t look away from it. Seemingly, there were no roads to it, it just “was” like a discarded Lego piece plopped down in the wrong playset. Jobim’s lyrics blared at this moment “it’s a truckload of bricks in the soft morning light. A car stuck in the mud. It’s the mud. It’s the mud.”
It occurred to me then, that Jobim would not have thought that this alien structure was a wart or a blemish in this tableau; instead, he would’ve thought it completed it as a necessary part of the whole. To delete it would be to obliterate a crucial part of the story. The Waters of March, the springtime rains that bring life to Rio de Janeiro, also bring with them floods, complications, destruction and sometimes death, but here Jobim celebrates all parts of them equally.
My understanding of the scripture, “All things denote that there is a God” started to shift in my head.
“All things denote that there is a God.”
All things.
All.
All?
It’s easy to sing praises of God’s reality when we’re in awe of His gifts, overcome by His mercy, when life is running smoothly, and we feel peace. But where does this leave my dad, who lost my mother in November, and others like him? The mourning, anxious parent who must deal with the fallout of their child’s torturous choices? The person in the dark night of the soul? The soul who has lost faith, no longer feels God, and has found themselves in an abyss of a crisis of disbelief? The couple who longs for a baby that never comes? The broken, the battle worn, the war weary, the exhausted—what of them? I’ve done little else but ponder this; there was no averting my gaze from that pesky, little word, “all.”
We must take it at its most literal meaning—all things means literally all things. This means that God’s reality, His “is-ness,” is in not only the glories of success and peace but also in the bleakest of circumstances, the most violent, and the most grave. But how is this so? What denotes His reality in those cases? I offer the following musings as possible answers.
1. First, the easy approach—viewing God’s reality through nature and universal, unchanging laws.
At first blush, we can interpret Alma’s statements to Korihor as a love letter to nature as a signifier of God. Alma says:
“Even the earth, and all the things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.”
This version of “all things” comes easily to us. It’s hard to find fault or not be overcome by rainbow emerging from a Hawaiian mist. In Gerard Manly Hopkins’s poem, Pied Beauty he praises nature in all its forms, both beautiful and unconventional. It reads:
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 áll trádes, 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
That texts begs to be read aloud and when I do, I want to swim in the sound of the words and the images they evoke.
And wouldn’t it be nice if we could all remain in that space of wonder and connectedness? But, as Elder Maxwell states, that Creator who created and understands the vastness of the universe as well as the simple splendor of the lilies, sent us here to understand Him and to understand His plan through, “real moral agency—with real mistakes and with real consequences! His plan includes real tests, real dilemmas, real anguish, and real joy.” (Maxwell, “Yet Thou Art There,” October conference,1987). Here comes that pesky word, “all.” Do these real tests and anguish denote him too? According to Matthew, those splendid lilies of the field “toil not neither do they spin” (Matthew 6:28)—but we certainly do. How can we see God’s reality in these challenges?
Life’s challenges arise in countless forms so I’ll choose just a few that show harder but perhaps more effective denotation of God’s reality than the just beauty that surrounds us.
2. God’s Silence: When Existential Crises Overwhelm Us
We have all encountered times in our lives when God seems to be hidden from us and silent. We can feel forsaken and left alone to flounder in the dark. We feel the existential panic of, “Well, maybe all of what I’ve been taught isn’t real and I’m just playing a dangerous fool’s game here.” We heed this 3 a.m. anxiety, allowing it to rule instead of leaning into the sensible workings of 10 a.m. When our need is earnest and important, we can find ourselves railing at Him, kicking and screaming and demanding His presence immediately. Overwhelmed and when nothing makes sense, we desperately clutch for any connection to him. C.S. Lewis puts it this way:
“On the other hand, ‘Knock and it shall be opened,’ But does that knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac?” And there’s also, ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity [to receive].” (Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed, Bantam 1976, p 54)
In other words, instead of demanding God’s voice to peal on demand, maybe we need to reframe what’s going on when we don’t feel him—perhaps God’s seeming absence creates an essential space, not present before His silence, that allows our choice to let faith and hope fill that space. The absence creates an opportunity to forge an authentic, trusting relationship with Him that wouldn’t have been possible if we had gotten our way in the first place. It allows a stillness that demands total reliance on Him. It demands a choice to be made—we can choose faith, hope, and trust in Him or we can choose despair, anxiety, and doubt.
Elder Richard G. Scott tells us that His silence is actually a gift saying:
“What do you do when you have prepared carefully, have prayed fervently, waited a reasonable time for a response, and still do not feel an answer? You may want to express thanks [at this point] when that occurs, for it is an evidence of His trust [in you]. When you are living worthily and your choice is consistent with the Savior’s teachings and you need to act, proceed with trust.” (Scott, Richard G. The Supernal Power of Prayer, April Conference 2007
In other words, in times of silence, gratitude for God’s trust in you is your only play here. In these times, because of your reaching, even His silence denotes that He is there.
3. The refineries in the landscape: How to find God when circumstances out of our control cloud our view of God.
Sometimes the most acute pain and suffering comes to us from the actions of others or from circumstances beyond our control. These circumstances show up like that random refinery in the landscape—in the middle of nowhere, spewing blackness. How do conditions like death, difficult family dynamics, divorce, loss of any kind, and great suffering denote God? Perhaps it’s when are able to see the connection with how they purify our souls, burning off all but what is needed for our progression, and binding us to each other and God.
In a recent interview with Stephen Colbert, Anderson Cooper asks him about the death of his two older brothers and his father that occurred years earlier. Tearfully, Cooper, who had just lost his own mother, says:
“[You’ve said you’ve] learned to, ‘love the thing that [you] most wished had not happened.’ [and you also said] ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ Do you really believe that?”
Colbert paused and answered:
“Yes. . .it’s a gift to exist. . .. And with existence comes suffering . . .. I don’t want [death] to have happened [to my family]. I want it to not have happen[ed] but if you’re grateful for your life . . . then you have to be grateful for all of it; you can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for. So what do you get from loss? You get awareness of other people’s loss which allows you to connect with that other person which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it’s like to be a human being. . .. [it’s a gift] . . .. and in my tradition that’s the great gift of the sacrifice of Christ, is that God does it too. That you’re really not alone, God does it too.” (17 August 2019, internet)
Instead of wishing away our challenges that are outside our control, maybe it’s more useful to make connections between them all and ponder the lessons that we glean from them. Connecting disparate entities gives meaning to both entities; if you’re observant enough, you’ll be able to see that God is key to helping you understand these connections. For instance, I wouldn’t be missing my mother so desperately right now without having loved her so much while she was alive. “The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life” and that’s something none of us want (President Kotter quoting President Nelson 1992, Beverly Hawes funeral talk, 26 November 2019). I wouldn’t feel so bound to my children if I hadn’t walked stony paths of hardship along with them. Harrowing experiences seal our total dependence on our Heavenly Parents which in turn forge a more authentic, concrete relationship with them that could not have happened any other way. Maybe those ugly workhouses in the desert landscape aren’t pumping the smoke of waste but instead of opportunities for faith, connectedness, and reliance on God?
As Elder Maxwell put it:
“In a hundred ways, Deity will always be there . . . including in our suffering . . . to those of you who so suffer and who, nevertheless, so endure. . . we salute you in Christ! Please forgive those of us who clumsily try to comfort you. We know from whence your true comfort comes. God’s bosom is there to be leaned upon.” (Maxwell, Neal A. Yet Thou art There, October Conference 1987)
4. Tender Mercies Denote There is a God
Thankfully, God is aware of these massive universal challenges in our specific, minute lives and He manages them by giving evidence of His love with frequent, bounteous tender mercies—what Maxwell calls, “Macrolove with such micromanifestations!” (Maxwell, Neal A. Yet Thou art There, October Conference 1987). Though the word “tender,” in the phrase “tender mercy” could connote a soft, gentle, or even weak action, in reality any tender mercy that has been given to me has been robust, compelling, and overwhelming in its actuality and execution. My friend Victor calls tender mercies, “God Shots,” and that may more accurately describe what is happening when a tender mercy occurs; God puts his players in position and then takes a shot which always clears the goalposts.
Tender mercies are deeply personal, requiring dozens of events to line up, and contain countless variables for their success. They also require gratitude at His grace with keen humble observation to acknowledge they came from God. The more you are grateful for these intercessions, the more you’ll see their connection to each other and what was needed to happen to bring it about. This will, in turn, allow you to see God in all things pertaining to them—the dappled trout, the decaying water heater, the flat tire, the mud—you’ll see them all as loving gifts from God and recognize their place in your journey.
Perhaps a personal example will show how all of this—beauty, challenge, darkness, goodness, and sorrow--comes together to denote there is a God.
Orion in the desert….
The constellation Orion is a main character in the folklore of my parent’s first kiss. The story goes that when they were outside looking at the stars, my mother pointed to the heavens, poked her lips out, turned her face toward my dad’s and said, “Look, Rodney, there’s Orrrriiiioonn.” He got the hint and kissed her. So you can imagine my feeling, when, upon walking outside to my sister’s car on our way to go see our mother who had just died a few minutes earlier that night, I looked up at Orion squarely before me, framed in between two trees. In the previous week since I had arrived in Idaho to be with and care for her in her last days, the nights had only been overcast with clouds shrouding all the stars. But not that night. Instead it was clear, Orion brazenly on display, full of love, a family symbol, standing as sentinel, assuring her ever presence and steadfastness even in her absence. I thought—“Yep. I’m right. She’s not gone. There she is.” I said my goodbyes, we had services for her later that week, buried her on their 60thwedding anniversary, and then I had to return home to California without her.
Four days after I was home, and four days of no shower, in the same sweats I hadn’t taken off since I had arrived, I sat on the couch staring at the wall. Depression was in full battle mode. This was my new normal. Just then, an update appeared on my phone about a significant celestial event that had the astronomy world buzzing—one of the brightest stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse, was dimming more than it ever had before signaling that perhaps, a supernova—the death of the star—might be imminent. It was the first time such a prominent star in the night sky acted in this way. I read further—Betelgeuse is Orion’s right shoulder. Orion’s brightest star, was fading. “Of course, it is” I thought, “Because our brightest star isn’t here with us.” I immediately started sobbing.
I felt known and cared for by God even more deeply because a few weeks earlier, someone had sent me a quote from Neal A. Maxwell about the Star of Bethlehem which solidified my theory of the timing of this star’s dimming:
“The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit millennia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe, has given at least equal attention to the placement of each of us in precise human orbits so that we may, if we will, illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not only lead others but warm them as well.” (Maxwell, Neal A. That my Family Should Partake, Deseret 1974, p 86)
For a girl who understands the world mostly through symbol and metaphor, these events were the tenderest of tender mercies—a God Shot for the ages. That star in my mother’s constellation didn’t fade 9 years ago nor has yet to fade in 9 more to come; it was a phenomenon now, at the time of her death, but was set in motion many, many, many years ago and it seemed like it was a gift just for me. From death and sorrow came healing and comfort and an awareness of the Lord. I was grateful, scribbling down the experience as fast as I could, kneeling and thanking God for this most remarkable gift.
Of course, all things will eventually swell into one unified, perfect chorus that not only denotes that there is a God but will sing to His reality. This day is best described in an essay by Robbie Taggart and was read at my mother’s services:
“I am reminded that one day the air will begin to shimmer and shake and hum with a music that is not of this world. And a light will come from the east, growing in intensity and brightness, causing the air to shake, to undulate and roll, to swell and to sing, causing the grass to reach and to sing and the trees to shiver with music. And I will feel myself becoming lighter, sorrow and heaviness melting away like snow in spring, will feel the joy I have always known myself capable of, will look around to see others, to find ourselves soaring through the air. To meet the Lord in the clouds, the scripture says. A new song. We will come singing a new song. A song beyond words but created with human voices. And the voices of others, of angels and gods. I will know the words or the nonwords, the motions of the mouth and the movement of lungs, even though I have never heard it, yet I know somehow that I have heard it, have known it. I was born from this song, brought forth from this light. And the Lord will wipe away all tears from off all eyes. There will be no more sorrow and no more death. I will know as I am known. I will rise. The earth will become new. Grace will triumph. All things will be new. All things. All things.” (From a Personal Essay by Robbie Taggart, Religious Studies Quarterly, 104.)
All things denote that there is a God.
All.
I look forward to that day when we no longer search for Him through plastic, smudgy airline windows because we will be in His presence with direct access to his love and reality without barriers or doubt . . . or cinderblock refineries.
