The Immanent Texts

Cleaned transcript with embedded video clips identified.

Opening

Well, thank you, Darrell. Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you for your help today.

Let’s get started with a little allegory.

[Video clip: Pee-wee’s Big Adventure]
“Thanks a lot, dudes. I hope you find your bike, man.”

Okay. I teach filmmaking, not film theory—oops, I’m too far ahead—not film history. Filmmaking.

I’ve associated and continue to associate with a lot of brilliant people in the film department and now at the Maxwell Institute. But when it comes to this kind of presentation, I’m like Pee-wee zooming off on a borrowed motorcycle I’m not sure how to ride. So bear with me, please.

Perhaps my purpose today is to convince myself that my occupation serves some actual purpose. I’d like to think that the arts are a divine gift and that film is uniquely capable—for good or ill—of helping us see and hear and communicate.

In addition to scripture, I believe there are efforts from our sisters and brothers that, while not possessing the authority or obligation associated with sacred writ, nevertheless reveal loving communications from heaven—whether the authors intend them as such or not.

Transcendence and Immanence

To try and make this point, I’m going to use a couple of terms today.

The definition of transcendence probably depends on the philosophy you’re reading. Online it just means “neato.” We’re going to use it here in a religious sense to describe encounters with God and the godly outside of natural experience. This is the supernatural, the miraculous, the visionary.

The second term is immanence. Immanence, in a religious sense and also overly simplified, is that God is present in creation—that matter matters. We can experience the divine in the physical or natural world and in one another.

Simone Weil says it like this. The concepts of transcendence and immanence are not mutually exclusive. For many, they’re even symbiotic. But while transcendence is characteristically vertical, immanence is characteristically horizontal.

Immanent perception requires a spiritual mind and a spiritual imagination—the ability to see in novel ways. Imagination is one of the least understood, perhaps even vilified, of the divine gifts. It can be a problem because imagination is difficult to tame and manage. It bursts on the scene speaking in tongues without license or warrant. It may be true, it may not. It is vital to agency.

Consider the following experience of someone perceiving the divine presence through matter. In this case, immanence leads Ansel Adams to transcendence.

[Video clip: Documentary segment on Ansel Adams]

“Each summer, he ventured farther and farther up into the rugged high country beyond Yosemite Valley—sometimes on his own and sometimes with members of the Sierra Club, the wilderness group John Muir had founded 30 years before. Long days of climbing and hiking that began before dawn and often ended well after dark, making pictures when he could and wandering, he wrote, in ‘translucent unity with the world and sky.’

Late one morning in the summer of 1923, wandering amidst the harsh and bleakly beautiful high country east of the valley, he came as close as he ever would to capturing in words the soaring emotions that sometimes came over him in the high mountains.

‘I was climbing the long ridge west of Mount Clark.

It was one of those mornings when the sunlight is burnished with a keen wind, and long feathers of cloud move in a lofty sky.

The silver light turned every blade of grass and every particle of sand into a luminous metallic splendor. There was nothing, however small, that did not clash in the bright wind, that did not send arrows of light through the glassy air.

I was suddenly arrested in the long, crunching path of the ridge by an exceedingly pointed awareness of the light.

The moment I paused, the full impact of the mood was upon me.

I saw more clearly than I have ever seen before or since the minute detail of the grasses, the small flotsam of the forest, the motion of the high clouds streaming above the peaks.

I dreamed that for a moment time stood quietly, and the vision became but the shadow of an infinitely greater world, and I had within the grasp of consciousness a transcendental experience.’

—Ansel Adams.

He would spend the rest of his life trying to capture on film the quicksilver light he saw that morning and the sense it conveyed of a deeper truth and meaning.

I think one could risk saying that, in a broad way, it’s a quasi-religious sense of identification with the landscape.

The quality of the experience, I think one might call ecstatic. You know, Bernini, St. Teresa—same kind of nervous insubstantiality, this flickering, film-like ecstasy.

Ecstasy—meaning it’s outside yourself. It’s an experience of—I mean, I think one might actually, for a change, really use the word epiphany without forcing it too much.”

Immanent Text

Immanent perception allows us to regularly experience God in the material world—through nature, through instruction, through music, through film, through sound, through literature, through commentary, through each other.

We could spend a great deal of time considering the problem of evil in this context, but in the interest of staying on point, we’ll jump to the part that tells us the material world has a purpose. It exists to instruct and develop us. This from the book of Abraham that you’re familiar with.

This is probably where I’ll crash through the sign, if I haven’t already. I’m going to use a phrase that I think is entirely made up. It’s not philosophically, theologically, or artistically grounded in anything. It’s just a phrase I can use so that you know what I’m talking about. I’ll call it immanent text.

My use of the phrase doesn’t describe a style or a technique. It’s just a way to classify creative materials that manifest the divine but aren’t scriptural. I’m calling them immanent for two reasons. First, because they are the products of people and imagination—and people are infused with the divine. Second, because immanent texts themselves are rooted in matter, in sensory perception and experience.

I’m conspicuously avoiding the term sacred art as it’s usually used to describe the overtly religious. First, because: who says? And second, because the term may place emphasis on the object itself as a sort of holy relic.

Sometimes, perhaps rarely, an immanent text leads the spiritually minded to a direct encounter with the holy. More often, it leads the spiritual viewer to sacred impressions. But perhaps the most common experience with an immanent text is simply the revelation of godly truth or comfort, whether the viewer recognizes the truth as godly or not.

These are divine ministrations revealed through artistic renderings. They’re designed to lift and bless according to the light we are prepared and willing and able to receive.

Ansel Adams was prepared. He’d been hiking for about three years before he had that immanent perception that led to a transcendental experience. There might have been a fellow hiker three feet away that day who simply enjoyed seeing the rocks and the trees—and there’s beauty in that as well.

There is a vast library of both believing and secular artistic expression that is capable of serving just as nourishing a purpose as overtly religious art—just as there is much overtly religious art that may lack divine presence and truth.

Example: The Tree of Life

The following remarkable film is called The Tree of Life. We won’t watch the whole film. Listen carefully to the difference between perceiving the natural world carnally versus perceiving it immanently or with grace. The segment begins with God addressing human beings, followed by the whispered expression of a pilgrim addressing God. He recalls what led him to God’s door, and it was the immanent experience of his relationship with family.

[Video clip: The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)]

“It was they who led me to your door.

They taught us there are two ways through life:
The way of nature and the way of grace.
You have to choose which one you’ll follow.

Grace doesn’t try to please itself.
Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked.
Accepts insults and injuries.

Nature only wants to please itself.
Get others to please it too.
Likes to lord it over them, to have its own way.

It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it,
And love is smiling through all things.

They taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.”

We are invited to perceive God’s presence in matter because God intends to be perceived in matter.

Let’s take a moment with Doctrine and Covenants 88. Let’s just read this for a second.

[Tom reads from Doctrine and Covenants 88 about God’s light being in and through all things. The specific verses are not transcribed here.]

Our perception of God in the material universe is not purely physical. Eyes are enlightened, understanding is quickened—our perception receives divine help.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning articulates the potential role of the artist in that perception, and it’s about more than duplicating nature or reality. She wrote:

“Art’s the witness of what is
Behind this show. If this world’s show were all,
Then imitation would be all in art.

There, Job’s hand grips us, for we stand here, we,
If genuine artists, witnessing for God’s
Complete, consummate, undivided work;
That every natural flower which grows on earth
Implies a flower upon the spiritual side,
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow.”

When “Immanent Text” Fails

There’s a lot of nature in these passages, isn’t there? But nature isn’t the only kind of matter we perceive or encounter. Very often, the subjects of immanent texts are flesh and bone. And that gets tricky because people misbehave.

There are many highly skilled artisans whose work exploits or wallows in misbehavior. Their work aggressively and perversely fails the Moroni 7 test. They render abhorrent behavior in purely imitative, explicit ways. That kind of material is not immanent. It fails as art because it transforms and reveals nothing—even if it’s clever, exciting, or stunning aesthetically. The effect is corrosive.

BYU film professor Dean Duncan has written this:

“The arts are uniquely suited to spare us personal devastation while allowing instructive healing proxy encounters with trouble, sorrow, pain, and misconduct. But when art harms the patient for the sake of its own glib carelessness, it’s time to find a new doctor.”

The perception of immanent text will differ from person to person, just as Alma and Korihor saw the same universe quite differently. Immanent text will not always result in a transcendent or even spiritual experience. It may be entirely unperceived. Or it may minister in practical ways—through affection and laughter, through courage and caution. And often those practical experiences are what we need.

The Lord provides blankets and food and shelter and company, whether the vulnerable see His hand in it or not.

Though an artist’s heart and mind play critical roles in these texts, artists may or may not consciously know that they’re standing as witnesses for anything. They might be Caiaphas prophesying on accident. They may even be hostile to the notion, but their puny arms won’t repel it.

Example: Amadeus

The film Amadeus expresses this idea. Here, Mozart’s contemporary, the composer Salieri, frustrated by Mozart’s moral shortcomings, begrudgingly experiences an immanent text from a source he considers unworthy.

[Video clip: Amadeus]

“I restored the third act. It was bold. Brilliant.

The fourth was astounding.

I heard a woman disguised in her maid’s clothes hear her husband speak the tender words he has not offered her in years, simply because he thinks she’s someone else.

The music of true forgiveness filled the theater, conferring on all who sat there perfect absolution.

God was singing through this little man—

Unstoppable—making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar.”

Distracted Times and Matthew 13

Okay, that yawn brings us to our next point.

Consider Matthew 13. We’re familiar with this. The Lord proceeds to tell them that much of the sower’s work results in failure. The story is self-reflexive. Jesus is sowing as He tells the story of a sower. Some of His listeners are not receiving and internalizing the truth about people who fail to receive and internalize truth. Some may have even yawned.

Now, what I’m about to say isn’t an accusation, I promise. It’s an observation. We live in distracted times. While I’m speaking, many of you are on laptops or on phones. You have other matters you’ve agreed to tend to—probably assignments due, maybe emergencies, or you’re taking notes.

We overcommit. Or perhaps we just have a game to play or a post to read or a text to send. But the lack of presence so pervasive in our culture is the poor ground Jesus references in the parable. It’s us. It’s me.

And it’s not just about listening in church. It’s about engaging with a world that was created for our benefit. Notice how many people you see on campus and elsewhere whose ears are plugged and whose eyes are down. I’ve done it too. Sometimes we’re blessed by earbuds and screens, but not to the exclusion of things that matter most—not for the sake of multitasking, hyper-socializing, or not knowing what to do with our hands or our time.

I can and must do better. The neglect is worrisome. We’re emotionally and psychologically malnourished because we often ignore the presence of God that is offered and perceivable in the immanent world.

And I honestly do apologize for that grumpy boomer digression. This is why, by the time you’re my age, everybody hates you.

At the conclusion of the parable of the sower, the Lord leaves the responsibility of interpretation to us. “You have wit and agency,” He seems to suggest. “Now use it. Don’t be lazy.” The disciples, perhaps thinking more about His performance than His message, ask Him why He’s using so many parables. He answers their question by immediately giving them six more. Apparently the Lord doesn’t apologize for valuing our role in the revelatory process.

Truth and Fact

There’s an important distinction between truth and fact when it comes to stories. In engineering, all fact is truth, but in the arts, not all truth is fact. The story of the prodigal son is true, but it’s not factual. Neither is the story of the good Samaritan. There can be truth in fiction.

This is why writers often find metaphors or signifiers that express meaning. I still remember my five-year-old boy many years ago telling me that he’d figured out what trees mean. And I won’t tell you the grand secret because that’s not the point, but I believe that we’re hardwired to make these connections if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Immanence is revealed through signifiers, and openness to artistic metaphors and signifiers vastly expands our opportunities for comfort, instruction, and inspiration from immanent texts.

Example: “The Lanyard” (Billy Collins)

Consider the signifier in the following poem, The Lanyard, by Billy Collins.

[Tom reads “The Lanyard” by Billy Collins]

“The other day I was ricocheting slowly off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the ‘L’ section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake,
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

‘Here are thousands of meals,’ she said,
‘and here is clothing and a good education.’

‘And here is your lanyard,’ I replied,
‘which I made with a little help from a counselor.’

‘Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world,’ she whispered,
‘and here,’ I said, ‘is the lanyard I made at camp.’

And here I wish to say to her now
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove out of boredom
would be enough to make us even.”

For me, the poem expresses truth and gratitude as deeply as a hymn. It sends my heart not only to my earthly mother, but to my heavenly parents, gladly receiving my paltry offerings.

A lanyard isn’t inherently sacred, but poetry can render it so. For others, the signifier may not be enough, or the poem may not resonate. Perhaps for some, there have been circumstances, disappointments, and complications that make the poem unrecognizable or even painful.

But that’s one of the strengths of an immanent text. Immanent texts don’t represent themselves as authoritative or binding. They come to us as providential ministrations from fellow pilgrims—salve, water, and a place at the inn. And sometimes that latitude is what we need, given our varied circumstances, experiences, and readiness.

Of course, in life, facts are important. The historicity of Jesus is important. The origin of the Book of Mormon is important—but not to the exclusion of the content. Yes, we care that Jesus said it, but we also care greatly about what He said.

Here are a few brief examples of what I have experienced as immanent cinematic texts.

The first scene is by the great Iranian director Majid Majidi. It is overtly religious, revealing God in matter. In this segment, a young sightless boy has just been taken by his father to a trade school for the blind. The boy is feeling anxious and alone as his teacher, also without sight, introduces him to carving. Pay attention to the dialogue, but also to what you hear and see beyond the dialogue.

[Video clip: Majid Majidi film – teacher and blind boy at a woodworking bench (The Color of Paradise)]

[The teacher places wood in the boy’s hands, explaining different kinds of wood and tools. The boy opens up about feeling unwanted and unseen because of his blindness. The teacher gently counters, talking about God’s love, God being everywhere, and how hands can “see.” The scene mixes touch, sound, and the boy’s emotions as he learns to carve and to trust that God knows and loves him.]

That film, for me, is doctrine in wood shavings and fingertips—tactile in more ways than one. It is not scripture, but truth.

The next example is not overtly religious, but it also finds instruction in the natural world. A traumatized and isolated war veteran has been living with his daughter off the grid for several years. Following an accident to the father’s leg that required help from strangers, the daughter is beginning to comprehend the value of community. The father remains frightened by it.

We might be tempted to think that a true and overtly religious expression is superior to a true and non-religious one, but when our neighbors are gasping for air, we needn’t lead with the first discussion. First, we bind up the wounds. Here’s the clip.

[Video clip: Leave No Trace – father and daughter at a beehive]

“Have you ever seen inside a hive before?”

“If you put your hand over it, you can feel the warmth of the hive.”

“A person can withstand 500 stings. Close your eyes.
You don’t need to be scared.”

Metaphors and signifiers.

One more example. In this story, the protagonist has the capacity to experience her own future life through a series of visions forward. Sometimes those visions of the future are chronological, often not. She knows that she will have a loving marriage that ends in divorce. She knows that she will lose her daughter, Hannah, to illness. She knows how difficult it will all be, and yet…

Here, she experiences the present in a field outside at dusk, standing with a friend who doesn’t yet know he will one day become her husband and the father of their child. The scene begins with a letter to her daughter as the protagonist glimpses images from her future.

[Video clip: Arrival – Louise and Ian in the field, with future-vision voiceover]

“Hannah, this is where your story begins.

The day they departed…

If you could see your whole life from start to finish,
would you change things?

Maybe I’d say what I feel more often.

I’ve had my head tilted up to the stars
for as long as I can remember.

You know what surprised me the most?
It wasn’t meeting them.
It was meeting you.

I forgot how good it felt to be held by you.

‘H-A-N-N-A-H.’

You ready, babe?

‘You wanna make a baby?’

‘Yes. Yeah.’”

For me, that is not despairing, not diminishing—in fact, exalting. Through my own lens, it echoes Eve’s prophetic psalm. But that’s a personal perspective. Immanent texts aren’t generally created for doctrinal analysis. We needn’t twist them into scriptural compliance or reject them for non-compliance. This is poetry; it’s not the periodic chart.

I’ll wrap up.

Before coming to BYU, I had a work colleague who suspected the devil in nearly everything—in movies, in music, in literature, even in people. He was terrified all the time, this guy. Ironically, he saw God in almost nothing.

Carnal-mindedness inclines us to cynicism and overly eschatological thinking—everything and everyone in decay eventually. We’re sure the sky is falling. But I believe the Lord remains cheerfully and imminently present, even in a troubled world. He is still Emmanuel, still “God with us,” if we’re spiritually minded and willing to see and hear Him from moment to moment.

One more from Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

“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 it and pluck blackberries.”

And we’ll conclude with this from Elder Bednar:

[Video clip / quoted segment from Elder David A. Bednar about seeing the Lord’s hand in our lives and ordinary things being evidence of His grace.]

And I share these thoughts with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.